Johann Nepomuk ("Muki") Alois Maria Zwierzina
15 Aug 1825 - 3 Jul 1903
My Paternal Grandfather Muki
First child of Johann Zwierzina¹⁷⁹² and Maria Biedermann

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Data Summary:

Thanks to the assistance and the skills of midwife Barbara Karasek of Ungarisch Brod, my grandfather was born in good health on 15 August 1825. There were several people in attendance at his christening, but it is not clear who acted as Godparents.^fggdoc17

Historical Events of the Period
1825	Besides providing me with a grandfather, the year 1825 also produced Johann Strauß - the "Waltz King", and Beethoven's Symphony Nr.9
1835	The intermittently insane Ferdinand I. mounts the throne

1839 At the age of 14 Johann Nepomuk Alois Maria Zwierzina ("Muki") started his military career.^fggdoc55

Am 20. September 1839 mit Nachsicht des Montoursgeldes auf 14 Jahre als expropriis Gemeiner zum Infanterieregiment 1.
On the 20th of September 1839, having waived the equipment fee, [assigned] as expropriis commoner for 14 years to Infantry Regiment 1.^{my translation}

Expropriis Gemeine were volunteers who did not want to enlist as privates. They wanted to become officers, and they had to put up the money for their uniform and equipment. They were treated just the same as regimental cadets, but the latter could only be appointed with the express permission of the regimental colonel-proprietor and had to be soldiers' sons.

There is no record of Johann Nepomuk going to military school, but it is rather likely that for the next five years he did just that. As mentioned earlier, attendance at cadet school was often voluntary, expecting time to be the real instructor, so it is not a safe bet that he did go to cadet school.

It is interesting that the regiment he joined should have been Infantry Regiment #1, which is precisely the regiment which would later feature so prominently in the careers of both his sons and at least one nephew.

1844 He was named Regimental Cadet on 19 August. This was in fact the manner in which officers were recruited into the army. The cost was relatively small, and little was required by way of social connections, which included an Inhaber (owner of the regiment). Because the sum of money involved was only about 37 Gulden for Montourgeld (uniform and equipment money) when entering an infantry regiment, all regiments had a large number of cadets and entry was much sought after.

1847 Demoted to "common soldier" on 2 January because of an excess:

I cannot explain this demotion, but when discussing this with Hofrat Dr. Hillbrand, Director of the Kriegsarchiv in 1989, he kindly pointed out that they were very strict in the military in those days, and that it did not take very much to be demoted. The printer's production schedule must have been the reason that he is still shown in the 1847 edition of the Militärschematismus as "Johann Zwierzina, cadet IR1 [Infantry Regiment #1]".

Whatever my grandfather did on 31 December 1846 in Mailand [Milano] must have had something to do with the traditional New Year's Eve [Sylvester] celebrations. Grandfather was only 21 years old, and probably drank too much vino in Milano and became unruly, or simply embarrassed his Regiment. As I have since been able to witness on my father, and to some extent on myself, like most people, an inebriated Zwierzina can stray quite far from normal behavior. Grandfather could have done anything from punching out one of the locals, to telling a superior officer to kiss his behind. Except I doubt he would have been demoted for punching out an Italian local unless it was a very influential one. Or again, perhaps his misdeed was even more serious, and demoting him was the Regiment's way of saving him from bigger trouble.⁽²⁷⁾ When trying to obtain some documentation from the Austria Kriegsarchiv, the director suggested that in those days records would have been kept in the territory where cases took place, and I should try there. I did write to theItalian archives in Milano and eventually received a nice reply explaining that their records had been destroyed during a WW2 bombardement,

C omparing his career progression to that of his two sons, the one interesting difference is that he did not have to deposit the equipment fee to get in, yet he was still considered an "expropriis" cadet when he started (expropriis meaning that his equipment was outside of, and did not belong to the Army). Somehow this must have put him into a different category - at least from a bureaucratic point of view.

Four months after his demotion (on 16 May 1847) he did deposit the equipment fee of 33 Gulden and 42 Kreuzer, and was again designated an "expropriis common soldier". This is somewhat confusing since it seems to mean he was this time not a "cadet". The wording in the judgment gave the impression that he had lost that status forever (auf Beständig), on the other hand he was later again referred to as "Kadett". Whatever happened, obviously cost him in career progression. How did he raise the 33 Gulden and 42 Kreuzer equipment fee? It is not likely that it came from his father who was at that point working on his second career which paid a meager 200 Gulden per annum with which to support a family. An amount of 33 Gulden would have meant the equivalent of two month's living expenses. Considering the way his father had fought with the Hofkammer for what he viewed as wrongful deductions from his pay a few years earlier, it is not reasonable to think that he would have come up with the required money. Neither is it reasonable to think that Johann Nepomuk had it all saved up from the little pay a soldier received. This remains a bit of a puzzle.

He was by now 22 years old and again a common soldier, whereas his father had been an ensign at the age of 21, and his two sons, not yet born, would both be made ensigns at 19. His son Emil was promoted to Lieutenant at 21, and his son Hans at 22. This was of course no indication that Johann Nepomuk was a lesser man. As we shall see, it did not take him very long to ensure that he was noticed in a very positive way.

1847 He was transferred to Infantry Regiment 45 on 16 October. The 45^th would have been in Verona in 1847 (it had been moved about, as many regiments were: 1830 Fiume, 1835 Zara, 1839 Udine-Mantua, 1840 Verona, 1842 Vincenza, 1843 Padua, 1846 Treviso, 1847 Verona, 1848 Bergamo). Although the proportion of German-speaking officers was higher than one would have expected, it was apparently a mostly Italian regiment; witness the number of Italian names among the officers: 5/14 of captains, 1/5 of Lieutenants, 6/20 of first Lieutenants, 12/39 second lieutenants, and 18/37 cadets had Italian names, or overall 36.5%. On 16 December 1847 he was promoted to Gefreiter (a notch below corporal, something like an American PFC, below NCO, more like a private bbut with a bit more pay). Then came his opportunity.

What the Grundbuchblatt does show, is that he was promoted on that very day to sergeant, and that six months later he was promoted to Lieutenant, at which time he also received a Silver Medal of Valor (see below). But above all, there is The Picture! It shows the Crown Prince Franz Joseph on a ladder looking at the ensuing battle, while my grandfather is besieging his Majesty's adjutant to get him out of there (see partial picture below). The following caption affixed beneath the original painting confirms Grandfather's memorable involvement:

Crown Prince France Joseph's Baptism by Fire in the Battle of Santa Lucia

Crown Prince Franz Joseph, standing on a ladder, observes the closing in of Piemontese troops, and becomes witness to the heroic fighting of the 3rd Battalion of the 45^th Infantry Regiment. Cadet Zwierzina is asking the wing adjutant to get the Crown Prince down from the ladder and out of the lunette as enemy cannon balls are landing near him. After some hesitation, His Imperial Majesty did leave the ladder and the lunette - and one minute later a cannon ball smashed through the ladder into the wall.
(The original of this picture is in the possession of Infantry Regiment Nr.45 Prince Frederic August, Duke of Saxony.)^{(1) my translation} See the original German text " Die Feuertaufe des Erzherzog Franz Joseph ..."

The following description appears on page 345 of the Exhibition Catalog under the number 17.84:

Baptism by Fire at Santa Lucia

"Franz Joseph's Baptism by Fire" has been lauded by artists in many variations which has provided considerable, and welcome propaganda exposure to the 18 year-old successor to the Throne. Enthused by the battles of Radetzky in Northern Italy, the young Crown prince proceeded in April 1848 to Radetzky's headquarters in Verona and insisted - in spite of numerous justified objections from Radetzky - to take part in the battles. As a (well-guarded) observer he witnessed on May 6, 1848 the battle at Santa Lucia near Verona and proudly reported to his mother: "I have for the first time heard cannon balls whistling by, and I am really happy."
Vienna, Austrian National Library, Portraits Collection, Inv.# Pk2598/190. ^{my translation} To see the original German text "Feuertaufe in Sta. Lucia" click on the icon.

It is to be expected that such an episode would be mentioned by many authors, and that others may perceive the details differently, mainly because not all writers had the same degree of access to eyewitness accounts, or simply lacked the desire or know-how required for precisely researching a minor occurrence which had little significance in the context of their work's principal theme.⁽²⁾

1st Silver Bravery Medal

1848 In the same place on November 16, 1848 Muki received the Silver Medal for Valour 2^nd class for displaying bravery while throwing up a barricade under fire to allow the battalion sufficient time to regroup. The following is the complete text of the documents used in the submission to request the decoration.^{fggdocs73-1,-2,-3(3)}

Testimony to Bravery

During the attacks on the village of Santa Lúcia by Piemontese troops, the defense of the Lunette⁽⁴⁾ in front of the exit from the garden of Casa Rizzardi to the left of the road leading to Villa-franca, was assigned to the above named company.

After the enemy had brought its entire strength to bear on the village, and was already entering the Lunette with fury, the Company was forced to retreat through the garden and to occupy the house; under pressure of the pursuing enemy, corporal Agostino Amici, and two men were detailed to barricade the entrance to the garden.

Expropriis sergeant Johann Zwierzina of this Company noticed however that the corporal was all alone engaged in this activity, and jumped to lend a hand with great determination and courage which was highly laudable.

This expropriis sergeant, with the help of the above named corporal, barricaded the entrance to the garden ignoring the heavy fire which the enemy maintained from both the right and the left through the existing loopholes while at the same time beginning to destroy the not yet completed barricade. In spite of this, thanks to their fearlessness and dedication, these two individuals completed their intended task [thus] providing the Company an opportunity to withdraw and to regroup for the renewed defense.

This expropriis sergeant did, in addition, lead his subordinate troops with much consideration and determination, encouraged them and set a particularly good example with his brave and courageous conduct during the fighting in the Lunette which continued from 9 in the morning till 5 in the afternoon.

The undersigned, having been personally present during the fighting, attest to the brave conduct of the above named Expropriis sergeant with their signatures: Giacopini Lorenzo, Gefr.; Angelo Massagrande, Corpl.⁽⁵⁾; (+++) Pietro Martin, Gefr.; Luigi Luizicome. SutoSc.; Lacrezna Ivigi, Corpl.; Revedin, Lieutenant; Bergmann, Lieutenant. ^{my translation} See original German text.

Endorsement by the commanding Regimental Major:

Since the creation and awarding of a small, silver medal for bravery to courageous soldiers from sergeant downwards was authorized by His Majesty the Kaiser through the highest cabinet document of the 19th of the previous month, one has the pleasant obligation to recommend that this excellent, loyal and courageous sergeant be awarded this medal, and we therefore certify the above described action with our signatures at Verona on 2nd September 1848. Bunnari, Kapitain;
vidi! Knollmann, Major.^{my translation} See original German text.

From the foregoing documents it was not immediately evident that both incidents were part of the same action. Then in December 1990 I received from the Kriegsarchiv in Vienna the photocopy of pages 292 and 293 of the book by Alfons Drágoni Edler von Rabenhorst entitled Geschichte des k. u. k. Infanterie-Regimentes Prinz Friedrich August Herzog zu Sachsen Nr.45. Von der Errichtung bis zur Gegenwart (Published in Brünn [Brno] 1897).

The following text, quoted from Drágoni's work, provides additional details for both incidents, and ties them together:

The defense of S.Lucia belongs among the most excellent and memorable of war deeds. Imperial princes took part and fought in the ranks of the Army for Austria's right and honor. The soldiers saw these knightly princes share dangers and tribulations with them and recognized the high degree of trust and confidence that the Imperial House placed in Radetzky and his troops.

One of these princes, Franz Josef I who received his baptism by fire on the bloody fields of S. Lucia, is revered by the Army today as its Emperor and supreme commander.

As already mentioned, the 3rd battalion was standing advance guard. The 16th company, to which cadet-sergeant Johann Zwierzina had been assigned, had taken up support positions in the Casa Rizzari, its garden and the old lunette located in front of it. The lunette sat at the garden's westerly exit on the westerly exit from Santa Lucia on the road to Villafranca.

There was rifle fire at 6 a.m. on May 6 [1848], and Cadet-Sergeant Johann Zwierzina was ordered to take his unit into the lunette, to hold it, and in case of a withdrawal, to barricade the entrance.

The unit had only been at its post a few minutes when His Imperial and Royal Highness crown prince Franz Josef arrived in the lunette accompanied by two officers. A ladder was brought and positioned to the left of the entrance, and the crown prince immediately climbed it to observe the attack of the Piemontese troops. The enemy had opened fire with its artillery - first against the two field pieces stationed on the road, soon after however against the lunette. At first the shells went high over the lunette, but they soon started to hit that corner of the lunette which was facing the road. One got the impression that the enemy guns were zeroing in on the very spot which His Imperial and Royal Highness had selected as his observation post. The shells kept coming closer but were ignored by His Imperial and Royal Highness who was fully immersed in his observations.

Cadet-Sergeant Johann Zwierzina had his attention understandably divided between the task of directing the fire of his unit, and admiring the calm and cool behavior demonstrated by the youthful Crown prince. Finally when a shell landed only about three and a half meters away, Cadet Zwierzina rushed over to the two officers accompanying the Crown Prince, and pointing out the danger, begged them to have the Crown Prince leave the lunette. After some initial reluctance, His Imperial and Royal Highness did leave the ladder and the lunette - and one minute later a shell burst through the ladder into the wall.

(Footnote: This detailed description was obtained from the now Captain Johann Zwierzina, who lives in retirement in Grossiegharts).^{my translation} See Drágoni's original German text.

1860 Transferred to the 73rd Infantry Regiment in February, then to the Feldjäger Bataillon No29 in November 1860.

1861 In July he was promoted to captain 1st class and transferred to the 27^th Feldjäger Bataillon. While here, Ida, his fourth daughter was born in November 1861.

1862 A year later, in December, when it looked like they could live a reasonably normal life without transfers every few months, his wife Anna died in Graz. They had been married just a bit over six years, and there were four children under five years old - all girls (Netta, Mella, Emmi, Minne)⁽⁹⁾. Something happened to Johann Nepomuk. Two month after his wife's death, he went into temporary retirement, and stayed away from his duties for nine months.

1863 He returned to duty on 1 December and reported to the Feldjäger Bataillon No.2 where he stayed for three and a half years.

1865 In August he received the Offiziersdienstzeichen 1. Klasse (Service Badge for Officers, First Class). Although I can find reference to a Military Service Cross, and to Long Service Crosses for Officers, the years do not correlate. The various crosses seem to have been awarded for 8, and 16 years of service respectively. Muki would have had 26 years of service in 1865. He appears in Miltärschematismus for 1865 as Captain first class with the 2nd Jäger Bataillon at Königgrätz. (Looked up by Glenn Jewison).

Second Silver Bravery Medal

[für] tapfere und entschlossene Führung seiner Division gegen Cerekvic, in dessen östlicher Umfassung er sich mit Umsicht bis zum allgemeinen Rückzug behauptete.

[for] leading his division courageously and decisively against Cerekvic in the eastern enclosure of which he judiciously maintained his position until the general retreat.

Grandfather Muki was at the time attached to the 2^nd Jäger Bataillon of the 2^nd Imperial, Royal Army Corps Command, and was shown as "Captain first Class". The Requisition for decoration issued by the Corps Command shows that he already had been decorated with the Silver Bravery Medal 2^nd Class (the one he got in Santa Lucia in 1848).⁽¹⁰⁾

The words "Allerhöchste Belobung" are very much in accord with Falkenstein's publication in which he refers to "...the highest laudable recognition for outstanding achievements in time of war", and also with Hans & Emo Zwierzina's documents prepared at the time they received the same decoration as their father had received before them. The words correspond to the Military Medal of Merit (or Medal of Military Merit) which Falkenstein considers a synonym of the Signum Laudis. He may be wrong on that point, though, since there is a distinct and separate medal which has Signum Laudis inscribed on it.

Cousin Ida Birman heard it from her mother that when grandfather came home after the battle of Königgrätz he sat down, bowed his head and sobbed, as he remembered how they had been slaughtered simply because they were so poorly equipped compared to the Prussians.⁽¹¹⁾

1867 His last transfer to the Feldjäger Bataillon No.16 became effective 1 May.

1868 Seventeen months after his last transfer, on 1 October 1868 he was retired as an invalid at the age of forty-three years with an annual pension of 726 Gulden and 60 Kreuzer.⁽¹²⁾ According to the List of pension actions (Superarbitrierungsliste) KM 1868 1. Abt. 97-49, he suffered from a highly developed hemorrhoidal problem with emerging knots and bleeding, and was considered unhealable and a 'total invalid'.^fggdoc188 Such afflictions were frequently cause for being pensioned, but obviously did not slow down some other aspects of an old soldier's life. Johann Nepomuk married three more times after his retirement, and sired 16 more children, eight of which survived. Cousin Ida, who knew him, says there was (understandably) no outward sign of any physical disability. During 1868/69 he is reported to have been residing at Smechov near Prague.

1869 On February 2nd, he married Emma Thomala, daughter of Joseph Thomala and Anna Holl of Uherské Hradišté, Moravia (Czech Republic). The only child of this marriage to survive any length of time was a son Hubert, who outlived his mother, and died of tuberculosis at the age of fifteen. Some contagious childhood disease must have hit the family, because cousin Ida remembers hearing that three of the children were buried on the same day (although they may have died on different days). Reported to have resided in 1869 both at St. Veit near Prague, and at Bischofslak. These addresses need yet to be explored since previous information was possibly misinterpreted with the result that St. Veit was taken to be a suburb of Vienna, and Bischofslack could not be located for a long time and then was found to be in Slovenia and now called Skofja Loka. No trace was found of a Zwierzina family there during the years in question when Emma Thomala would have had children. So now this St. Veit near Prague and possibly another Bischofslack should be checked for births and deaths of children.

1873 War Medal

1874 He was awarded the 1873 War Medal (Kriegsmedaille).⁽¹³⁾ Please note that the ribbon should be black and yellow, and most likely had been switched in error with the Military Merit Cross.!

1881 An annual increase of 108 Gulden and 99 Kreuzer in his pension was granted him from the Tax Fund. This was the first increase to his pension in 13 years!

1888 Lehmann's allgemeiner Wohnungsanzeiger - Wien shows Johann Zwierzina, retired Captain, living at Gersthof (suburb of Vienna), Wallriess Strasse 19. <courtesy Erika Ulbing, Vienna>.

1889 According to the 31st year volume (1889) of "Lehmann's allgemeiner Wohnungsanzeiger - Wien" Johann Zwierzina is listed as "pens. Hptm." (Captain, retired) residing at Neugersthof (a suburb of Vienna), Neuwaldeggerstraße 37. <courtesy Erika Ulbing, Vienna>.

1890 He was given the Service Medal on Red and White Ribbon. I do have such a medal, and since neither Hans, nor Emo were in the picture yet, it must be Muki's, and this entry is the only one I can match it to.

1891 When my father Emo was born, his father was already 66 years old. By the time the last of the children was born, (a son Karl who did not survive) grandfather was 70 years old. Not surprisingly, he is remembered by my cousin as "never having any money".

1892 He was shown as residing at Wolking near Zlabings.

1893 Address stated as Zlabings.

1894 Address stated as Karlstein at the river Thaya in the province of Lower Austria.

1896 Address shown as Budweis.

1897 Shown as residing in Grossiegharts, Lower Austria. This seems to have been Muki's last address since we know that he died there in 1903.

1898 Jubilee

The 1898 Jubilee Medal commemorating the 50 year reign of Franz Josef I. would have been the last medal received by Muki. It would have been particularly meaningful for him since his Emperor came into his life exactly 50 years earlier in 1848 at the Battle of Santa Lucia.

Among the very few anecdotes my father told me, was how grandfather used to get up early and go out into the garden to watch for moles who kept ruining his lawn with mole hills. He would stand guard with a spade, and if a mole was digging a new hill, he would jab in the spade and quickly lift him out. It could not have been such a rare pastime among elderly gentlemen because Wilhelm Busch in his famous album also deals with it and provided this sketch among his collection of caricatures.

1896 Muki did receive a second increase to his pension. Effective 1 July he was awarded 204 Gulden and 41 Kreuzer Superplus, and 120 Gulden shelter assistance drawn from the Colonel Freiherr van Yppen Foundation. Was there no provision made for increasing pensions from the Monarchy's coffers, and when a needy, pensioned officer was finally helped out, the funds had to come from some private source? (There were many endowments intended for the support of retired officers and ranks, or for the education of their children). Muki was able to enjoy the increased pension for seven more years.

The former residence of Muki and family: house #26 at Grossiegharts as seen in December 1989

1903 Almost seven years to the day from his last pension increase, he died on July 3 in Grossiegharts, a quiet small town (population of 3200) in the Province of Lower Austria (Niederösterreich), not far from Waidhofen an der Thaya and the Czech border. His address at the time of death was "Grossiegharts 26" which is now an inn called "Brauhaus" as Dorli and I found out during our visit in December 1989. Johann Nepomuk Alois Maria Zwierzina was 78 years old. The cause of his death is recorded as "carcinom", and cousin Ida knew that he had died of intestinal cancer, and that he had suffered much during the last three months. The alarm about his imminent death had been sounded a number of times, but often prematurely, as he proved to be very tough, and clung to life; but each time the alarm was sounded Ida's mother Minne (Maria Zwierzina) made the trip to Grossiegharts to be present at her father's death. Although she is the only one mentioned by Ida in her story, I am convinced that other children were also notified and would have gone through the same motions.

Muki's grave. Note the shape of the stone.

See the white stone in front of tall cedars

The author shown pointing at his grandfather's name.

I have a photo of Muki's original grave stone, and cousin Ida said that the grave had been maintained for a long time, even after no more relatives remained in Grossiegharts. She does not know why, or by whom. During my visit to Vienna in December 1989 cousin Dorli and I made a sentimental journey to Grossiegharts.

We had a very pleasant surprise: The grave was indeed gone, but Dorli spotted the Stone, which she recognized from the photograph. It had been resurfaced, and made into a war memorial with about twenty names engraved into it of  locals who had fallen during World War I (1914-1918). As the very last name, they had added "Zwierzina J. 1903". By doing this, they not only acknowledged that this was his stone, but also that as an officer, he had been a soldier, and would therefore not be out of place among the other fallen soldiers, even though he had died 11 years before World War I. The most valuable consequence of this gesture, however, is that his name will not disappear. Soldiers' graves are maintained in perpetuity. I have written to the municipality of Grossiegharts in January of 1990 and thanked them on behalf of our family for the good judgement shown. In March 1990 Dorli sent me pictures she had taken at the graveyard, and I am photographed pointing to Grandfather's name on the stone.

Oberleutnant Johann Nepomuk Alois Maria "Muki" Zwierzina with first wife Anna Edle von Steinberg 1856

Anna Edle von Steinberg
1834 - 12 Dec 1862
First Wife of Johann Nepomuk Alois Maria Zwierzina
Daughter of Johann Edler von Steinberg and Eleonora née Becher

1856 on September 18, my grandfather Johann Nepomuk Alois Maria Zwierzina married Anna Edle von Steinberg. He was 31 years old which was not a coincidence but was in fact the rule, because marrying at a younger age than 30 would require twice the amount of the marriage bond (Kaution)) to be deposited.

Original design of the Coat of Arms for Johann Steinberg and his legitimate issue

Her father, Johann Steinberg, was born 1791 in Vienna, and had started his military career in 1809 by joining the Wiener Freiwilligen Landwehr Bataillon .⁽¹⁵⁾ Less than one year later the bataillon was disbanded, and he was transferred to the Herzog Baden Infantrieregiment Ret Nr.59 where he reached the quasi-officer rank of Fähnrich (ensign) in 1813 during the volatile period of wars known as the Befreiungskriege (Liberation Wars) in which most of the German lands battled Napoleon until he had to fight his way out of Germany. General Wrede with a Bavarian/Austrian army. Fähnrich Johann Steinberg took part in that bloody battle, and the fighting for the recapture of Würzburg, as well as the attack on, and the subsequent defense of the Lambóyer Forest where he became involved in a bayonet charge and hand-to-hand fighting on the exposed right wing of the line where he was eventually captured together with several officers, most of whom were already wounded. Afterwards an exchange of captured officers was arranged in which he was included and freed (his own account reads somewhat differently from the official version, and would imply that he had arranged his own release).^fggdoc199-34

In 1865 Anna's father appears on the unemployment list - residing in Graz.

Johann Nepomuk Franz Xavier Josephus Edler von Steinberg and wife Angelique de Visy

Anna's brother Johann Nepomuk Franz Xavier Josephus Edler von Steinberg was born 9 November 1841 in Pettau, Styria.⁽¹⁶⁾ He was a graduate of the military academy at Wiener Neustadt, and as a Lieutenant took part in the 1866 battle at Königgrätz and was listed as "missing" - then found in Prussian captivity, severely wounded in the left thigh. A ransom was paid and he was returned home to resume his career. In 1875 he married Angelique de Visy, who put up a marriage bond of 12,000 Forint. They had no children. Angelique de Visy (in Hungarian she was called Angyalka) was of Hungarian lesser nobility, and the daughter of István Visy and Franciska Geötz. Her family had demonstrated a history of upward mobility, having started out as administrators of estates and educating their sons until they had at least two physicians, a lawyer and an architect whose name is still visible on a bronze plaque in the town of Pécs.^fggdoc252

1878 Franz received the Order of the Iron Crown 3^rd class with war decoration as captain in the 52^nd Hungarian Infantry Regiment for action in Bosnia.

1888 Franz was awarded the Military Merit Cross, and was also wearing a Bavarian Military Merit Cross.

1895 As a Colonel, he assumed command of the 6nd Hungarian Infantry Regiment based at Maros Vásárhely.

In 1900 (2 May) Anna's brother was Major General and Commander of the 3^rd Infantry Troop Division, and by then had been mdae a Knight of the Leopold Order, and had been decorated with the Order of the Iron Crown 3^rd Class with war decoration, the Military Cross of Merit, the Military Medal of Merit, and several other medals. The 1904 Schematismus lists him as Major General and Brigade commander within the 3rd Division (5^th Brigade at Linz). He made FML (Field Marshall Lieutenant), and retired 1 Nov 1906, at which time he was awarded the Order of the Iron Crown 2^nd Class.

Palace of Schönbrunn, Vienna

A family anecdote from that period was told by Ida about the long corridors of Schönbrunn, and the great distances one had to walk to go to the bathroom, and the fact that Schönbrunn was so full of rats that female residents did not dare go on the long walk unless they were escorted to the toilets by a guard who kept clapping his hands all the way to frighten away the rats. It had to be the rats; surely the fact that the guards were young men in handsome uniforms would have nothing to do with ladies needing to be escorted on those long walks down the corridor - no, it had to be the rats.

The 1914 Ruhestandsschematismus shows him as a retired Feldmarschalleutnant with a residence address of Linz, Franz-Josef-Platz 6.

Franz Steinberg died in Pécs, Hungary in 1920, at which time he had been receiving a pension of 14,016 Kronen per annum.⁽¹⁸⁾ His wife Angelique outlived her husband, and probably all her other relatives when she died on 25 February 1940 in Pécs, Hungary at the age of 91 - confirming yet one more piece of information cousin Ida had provided from memory.^fggdoc207

Anna obviously came from a military family, her father being a Colonel at the time of her marriage. All in all, according to her granddaughter Ida Birman, the match was considered a good one (in the semi-vulgar military jargon of the day eine gute Stallung). The bride had found herself a dashing young officer who had been decorated for bravery, and had saved the Emperor's life at the front. The groom had found a girl from a good family who could put up the required Kaution (Marriage Bond), and since he recently became 30 years old, all the army's requirements were fulfilled, as no doubt were Johann Nepomuk's expectations, who could not help but benefit from the association with a high-ranking father-in-law, and a brother-in-law who was a rising star in the military.

Franz Xavier Becher, grandfather of Anna Edle von Steinberg

What the text on that reproduced piece of silk shows is that Major von Steinberg, who considerably outranked his new son-in-law, had also been a mere first lieutenant when he was married 29 years earlier. It was Anna who started calling my grandfather Muki, an endearing variation of Nepomuk, which was already in use in her family, since both her father and her brother carried the name Nepomuk, and in fact she called her brother Muki, which to Ida's generation became Onkel Muki.

Mella, Emmi, Minne 1862

It is difficult to resist the thought that she perhaps had a premonition of her death, because six weeks before it, she sat down one afternoon and wrote a letter to her husband, which she intended to be her 'testament'. It is a touching document which her granddaughter Ida Birman had kept among her treasures until her death in 1993 when it passed into the author's possession.^fggdoc140

The following is the complete text of Anna's letter, transcribed and translated by the author:

Dear Muki, While you are calmly having your afternoon snooze, I am writing my grandiose testament. As it happens I have submitted to my father my last, and justified request, to let you have the 2000 florins, say two thousand Gulden, as your property after my demise, should I die. It is unfortunately little, but it belongs to me legally and you should be able to claim it in court if one should attempt to withhold it from you. It is still part of the inheritance from my good mother. The Kaution will have to be left alone for the children, I think, as you well know yourself my Muki, so I cannot make dispositions pertaining to it. Everything else is yours to do with as you deem best. As you know, your will has always been my wish, and that I have always been happy at your side, and if we had some troubled moments, it was never due to a lack of trust, or for lack of love, but because of the sad circumstances.

Forgive me for not satisfying all your wishes, and for not taming my frivolous character, but try as I might, I found it impossible to do. You and my children became my life, and I am convinced that you will [remember] me in a friendly way, and should you find a being who you hope to be happy with, and who would provide a second, good mother for my children, the thought would calm me, and I would not at all feel jealous of her, as you always think, because I am convinced that there are beings who could have made you much happier than I, and because of this I thank you for your loving treatment in spite of everything.

I entrust you my children, my precious spouse Muki; give a happy ending to our shaky circumstances about which I could do so little. [I wish you] lasting health and a pleasant memory of your faithfully loving wife.
(signed: Anna Zwierzina, née Steinberg). . . . . . . See original German version of Anna's letter.

There can be no doubt about a preoccupation with money. As I have already described in the introduction to this book, the Austrian officer was destined to walk a tightrope between actual, privately-endured poverty, and an outwardly ostentatious appearance. He was expected to live "in the style becoming an officer", but he was not paid enough to support such a lifestyle. Many officers came from well-off families, and this was not a problem for them. It was however a big problem for those who came from humble backgrounds and had to get by on their army pay. Those that had a large family to support were the worse for it. This had to be a daily concern for my grandfather Muki, who had no other income but his pay, and who must have felt strong pressures to keep up with his in-laws, not to mention with the rest of the garrison, who probably envied him for having married into such a well-to-do family of a high-ranking officer. In all fairness, I must lay the blame on grand father for displaying absolutely no intelligence when it came to producing as many children as he did. I cannot think of a more suitable phrase for him than "he made his bed and lay in it."

The foremost concern Anna had was to ease her husband's burden, while still protecting the nest egg which had been put away for the children in the form of the Kaution, or Bond. Anna says that she has a legitimate claim to her share from her mother's estate, and that she had asked her father to let it go to her husband should she die. She is under the impression that writing it down in a letter will provide the means for her husband, if necessary, to fight the family in court should they want to withhold the money from him. This can only mean that Anna not only considers her father capable of not honoring her "final request" and keeping the money, but also that she considers her husband quite prepared to take his in-laws to court over the 2000 Gulden (to put this amount into perspective, it should be remembered that Muki's father was getting an annual pension of 200 Gulden at about the same time. So 2000 Gulden are enough to live on for ten years; not an inconsequential amount!). One does get the impression that there was not too much love lost between Johann Nepomuk Zwierzina and the Steinberg family, nor that he had a particularly warm relationship with his wife Anna. There are other indicators in the letter. Anna accuses herself of having too carefree a nature. It would not be difficult to imagine that she could have been spoiled. She certainly would not have lacked anything until she married the perhaps dashing, but rather poor young officer, who could not provide the style of living she had learned to take for granted. She says she tried to change herself, but was not able to. The remark that she would not be jealous of another wife, even though he always thought her jealous, makes one suspect that perhaps he considered himself rather dashing and irresistible to the ladies. She does give him the green light for a subsequent marriage, so that the children would have a good mother, and he could be happier than she was able to make him. Anna does give him high marks, and thanks him for his loving treatment of her "in spite of everything", and then charges him with the task of creating a happy end to their rattled circumstances.

Anna was eight months pregnant with her fifth child, and she was 28 years old when she wrote that letter. She had been married six years, and was the mother of four little girls. What made her anticipate her death? And why would a young officer of 37 years need an afternoon snooze? There seems to be a note of resentment in Anna's choice of words when she says "While you are calmly having your snooze, I am writing my testament." As if she wanted to say that she was worried about things, so why was he not worried? Did everything seem all right to him, or was he unfeeling? This letter is an important piece of the puzzle because it is the first, and only written indication of how grandfather Muki was seen by someone who was very close to him yet not part of the military.

More than a hundred years later Muki does not get high marks from his granddaughter Ida Birman, whose memory of her grandfather is negative to put it mildly. Ida remembers being slapped by him at table when she was only three years old because she dared ask for a croissant. She remembers that "he never had any money", and tells how he wanted to have his daughters from the first marriage declared "of age" when they were only 12 years old, so that he could get his hands on the money that had been set aside for them. Ida, quite irrationally, also blames grandfather for the illegitimate pregnancies some of his daughters had, claiming that because he had no money, they could only afford to fall in love with, but could not afford to marry some dashing young officer, because grandfather could not put up the Kaution.

I have found Ida to be of very clear mind, and extremely factual in her recollection of things, so I am not about to dismiss her statements out of hand. That Muki had no money. I can believe without any hesitation, that he might want to get his hands on some money sitting idle somewhere while at the same time he was hurting from the lack of cash. I can also understand this being a problem. But when Ida is blaming grandfather for his daughters getting pregnant outside of marriage, I have to say that she shows an unreasonable, feminist bias. Since Ida's mother was one of the girls in question, and Ida never did know who her father was, she is obviously trying to protect her mother's reputation, which is laudable, but blaming that on her grandfather does not make any sense.

Despite of the above, there seems to have a real money problem since the topic also turnes up in later revelations from the records of his brother Moritz's side of the family. It appears that the two brothers, Muki and Moritz had frequent contact until after 1866 when it leveled off and then stopped. The descendants of Moritz report that Muki had continuous money worries, and that their great-grandfather (i.e. Muki's brother Moritz ) has been constantly approached for loans. This could have possibly strained the brotherly relationship.

The picture which emerges of grandfather Muki's first marriage indicates that Johann Nepomuk Alois Maria Zwierzina, the have-not, had married into a family of considerably more substance in terms of fiscal means and military potential. The expectations of Muki on the one hand, and of the Steinberg family on the other hand may both have been thwarted. Perhaps he thought they would contribute more to his well-being in terms of financial handouts, and of career-enhancing connections in the military. Although Anna's father had only been a First Lieutenant with the 6^th Feldjäger Battalion when he married Eleonora Becher in 1827, the Steinbergs were now accustomed to the standard of living of a colonel's family, and to the status of the nobility title of Edler, and from their perspective may have come to view their son-in-law as a social climber, who although evidently a good soldier, had only marginal prospects for a successful career. The Steinbergs may also have resented that their formerly pampered daughter should be badgered by continuous pregnancies (none of which even produced a son), and that as a result she should have to live in much more humble circumstances than she was accustomed to. Since it would appear that they could have subsidized their daughter's style at least in part if they had wanted to, I can only speculate that perhaps they did not care to be involved for reasons of their own.

Anna Eleonora Maria Sofia (Netta) Zwierzina

Anna Eleonora Maria Sofia "Netta" Zwierzina, was born 21 Sep. 1857 in Monza, Italy then baptized in Krakow, Poland a fact which illustrates the frequent changes in residence that officers were subjected to.^fggdoc55 Netta died 1935 in Alexandria, Egypt. She became a very cosmopolitan person who had been born in Italy, baptized in Poland, lived in the Czech Republic and Austria, and died in Egypt. Cousin Ida refers to her as Tante Netta. She was one of only two daughters educated in the "k.k. Officiers-Töchter-Bildungs-Institut zu Hernals bey Wien" which was established in Vienna 1775 in the wake of the General School Regulations of 1774 for the purpose of providing avenues of higher education for girls.

According to the 1845 Handbuch des österreichischen Kaiserthums I. Theil the teaching staff of this Institut consisted of four women (one chief and four sub-chiefs; three of them named Antonia) who taught the regular curriculum. For the spiritual well-being of the officers' daughters, they had the assistance of the cooperator from the Hernals parish who taught the Catechism, and physical problems were dealt with by the institute physician, a Mr. Ignac Rudolf Edler von Altenstern, who had a nice name of lesser nobility but apparently no degree in medicine. This was rectified by engaging an assistant who did have one, a Mr. Joseph Marceglia D. d. A. & Chir. (I believe the letters mean doctor of anatomy and surgery). To ensure that the girls were adequately exposed to the obligatory skills expected of a lady of good breeding, there were also employed a drawing mistress, and a dance master, a Mr. Zacharias Sedini whose name also shows up on the list of the Theresianum's teaching staff. Since the Theresianum was an institution for the development of future officers, it can be assumed that Mr. Sedini would have recruited the requisite number of dance partners from these two institutions for mutual benefit and enjoyment.

The Institute was apparently often approached by the well-to-do who wanted a very special governess for their children. Netta accepted one of these offers (it seems that she had another job before) and moved to Alexandria, Egypt where she spent the rest of her life in the service of a Mr. Alex de Zoogheb, who had been left with three daughters when his first wife died. Netta raised these as a mother would until they were all married. In the meantime Mr. Zogheb had remarried and had three sons from his second marriage. Netta stayed on and raised these also. On her photograph Netta looks like a pleasant girl. I had the opportunity to see her handwritten testament, written as a letter to Ida Birman when I visited in December 1989, and took the opportunity to translate it while Ida (94 at the time) was having her afternoon snooze:

My dear treasured Idi,

These are my last wishes, written on January 9, 1935 Alexandrie, Egypte [sic]. I wish that after my death 6 Rue Young personal effects such as jewelry, clothes, lingerie, books and photographs which are in my wardrobe [be forwarded] to my niece Mrs. Idi Birman c/o Jauch & Hübener [Wien] I. Schauplergasse 2, and her residence [Wien] VI. Brückengasse 4.

I request Madame Alex de Zoogheb to do everything [necessary] to let her have everything according to my last wishes, and I thank her, the benefactor and protector of my old days, in advance from my heart.

Jewelry, lingerie, hats, dresses to my sister Minne and my niece Netta and the grandniece Dorli Birmann [sic]. Among the jewelry there is a golden pocket watch with gold chain for niece Dorli Birmann, a long golden chain for niece Idi Birman, a golden brooch with a ruby and [for] sister Minne a brooch [made like a] safety pin, and a grey-blue moonstone for my niece Netta, 4 linen bed sheets with my monogram for Idi, three warm bed covers and one red édredon [sic] for Minne and Nettl 6 thick towels for Idi. The two golden letters "N" to my namesake Nettl. ^{my translation}

Ida told me that one day a gentleman had appeared at her door with a box containing Netta's things. (Dorli still had the gold watch with chain in 1989 but it was sold to some stranger upon her death in 1993).

2. Emilia ("Emmi" or "Mella") Pauline Maria Zwierzina
16 Mar 1859 - ?
Second child of Johann Nepomuk Alois Maria Zwierzina and Anna Edle von Steinberg

A Miss Emilie Kmen is mentioned in the probate of Karl Pelikan von Plauenwald dated 3 October 1931 as a secondary heir (in case the first slate heirs all predecease him). Since Karl Pelikan's wife Martha was a half-sister of Emilia Zwierzina, one wonders if this Emilie Kmen could be the Emilia Pauline Maria Zwierzina? The fact that she is listed as "Miss Emilie Kmen" seems to eliminate the possibility that Emilia Zwierzina eventually married somenone named Kmen - she would then not be listed as "Miss".

Nettl

Cousin Dorli told me that my father Emo used to make it a point to take her around when he could, and that he frequently took her around to the Birmans to visit. Dorli said that she loved them both and always enjoyed their visit. This closeness with the Birmans seems natural and long-standing. I have a photograph showing Dorli's mother Ida as a little girl of five or six visiting and playing with Nettl.

Minne

Maria Zwierzina, at that time 27 years old and living at Porzellangasse 13 in the 9th district of Vienna, attended the baptism of her half-sister Martha Zwierzina on 6 March 1887 as a representative of the child's maternal grandmother, Mrs. Marie Gottlieb who was unable to come to Vienna from Königsberg, Prussia.

"Minne" seems to have been another remarkable woman sired by my grandfather. Her daughter described her as a very principled lady who was a stickler for knowing right from wrong, and who was was very tightlipped and correct. It was still remembered by her 94-year-old daughter that she once broke down and cried simply because her little daughter Ida had taken a pear off the neighbor's tree. Although the child did have the neighbor's permission, that was not good enough for Minne, who maintained that if it was not yours, and you did not pay for it, you should not feel that it was all right for you to take it.

Maria Anna Zwierzina died on 14 May 1944, in Vienna, just fourteen days short of her 84^th birth day. Among her belongings were two photographs of two different men. Ida thought that one of these two men must have been her father, but Minne took the secret of his identity to her grave.

Ida Maria ("Idi") Zwierzina
15 Jun 1896 - 5 Nov 1992
Mrs. Adolf Birman
Only child of Maria Anna ("Minne") Zwierzina
Granddaughter of Johann Nepomuk Alois Maria Zwierzina

Ida (left) and Nettl visiting

Given the circumstances, Ida remained an only child. One would think that having been born in Vienna, the capital of Austria, to an Austrian mother, into a family of Austrian career officers, would have been sufficient to automatically qualify for Austrian citizenship. Yet in 1921 Ida, whose occupation at the time was Beamtin (office worker), needed to apply for, and was accorded the Austrian citizenship,^fggdoc158 but then in 1948, now a kaufmännische Angestellte (store employee), she had to have it bestowed on her all over again. ^fggdoc155 This corresponds roughly to the author's own experience after the end of World-War-II when due to our grandfather's Zuständigkeit (domicile entitlement) to Brno, which at that time came under the jurisdiction of the CSR, the (Communist) Czechoslovak Socialist Republic, we had a little difficulty proving that we were worthy of the Austrian citizenship, and should not be "shipped" to the CSR. Nothing is ever simple in Austria.

After attending the Handelsakademie Ida first worked with a firm of chartered accountants, and later slanted her line of work towards insurance. She worked for the international firm of Jauch & Hübener as Prokurist (one empowered to conduct business in the name of the firm). Her boss Mr. Hübener trusted her completely, and at one point during the war, he sent her to Romania to establish a branch office. Early in 1944, when the outcome of the war became apparent, Mr. Hübener appointed her as his sole representative with full powers of attorney for the time after the war. This, as it turned out, was a very wise move on his part, because it allowed Ida to make the decisions required for the continuation of the firm's operation, particularly since Mr. Hübener himself had by that time been implicated in the attempt on Hitler's life, had been arrested, and executed.

Ida as young mother with Dorli in 1929

Adolf Biman 1926

Ida taking Dorli skating

For some reason, and this time it could have been purely an attempt at avoiding the church tax, Ida again left the Catholic church on 5 Nov 1959 through the offices of the Magistratisches Bezirksamt für VI+VII Bezirk.^fggdoc154

The author in 1989 with Cousin Ida who really knew it all

Ida had lost all the things she had stored in the safety deposit box at the Bank because the vault was dynamited and the boxes were emptied. Luckily she had only stored half of her silver service in there, so in 1989 she still had the other half. She still had her 28 settings of good china, which she had for 56 years, and there was only one Mocha coffee cup missing. When I visited Ida in December of 1989 she was 94 years old, and a formidable person. Her mind was clear and she delighted in catching me saying something she considered not proven, or just not according to her opinion. She pampered herself less and moved around more than the average 30 year old. I would try to hold her chair and sit her down, but she either sat for only a minute and jumped up to get something that had been forgotten in the table setting, or she would hiss at me for trying to be too solicitous, and wouldn't sit down in the first place. She had a good appetite, still navigated the stairs occasionally to go to the hairdresser, baked for Christmas, and took over the ironing when Dorli abandoned it to answer the phone. She was adamant about having her snooze each afternoon, but would then channel-hop on her TV way past my bed time. She was very interested in current events, and would only miss the news by accident. All in all a very remarkable lady, and the one who made this work possible by sorting out the interdependencies of all the children from four different wives, and who at the age of 94 in December 1989 totally captivated me with her sharp mind. I made a transatlantic telephone call, and spoke to Ida at the occasion of her birth day in 1992. She was alert and in very good spirits. She said she was "97", and I jokingly accused her of cheating, whereupon she immediately, without missing a beat informed me that as of 5 a.m. today she was in her 97^th year, adding that her mother had told her she was born this early so that she would not miss a thing. I doubt that Ida missed much of anything during her lifetime. It was a nice touch for her last birth day that she also received a transatlantic call from Cousin Hans Nagati in Surrey, B.C. (Canada), and that she had, at last, the opportunity to speak with this newly discovered relative.

Ida (92) with "Axi" a Burmese cat - her last big love

As I later learned from her daughter Dorli, she became ill shortly after her birth day, and was hospitalized. She then had a heart attack, and a phone call from Dorli did not sound very hopeful. Ida did however rally considerably and regained her normal speech, and was able to feed herself. Then towards the end of October she had a relapse and did not speak at all for the last ten days until her death on Wednesday, the 5th of November 1992. Dorli told me that she had a very nice "old Catholic" service on Nov 18th at the Hietzing cemetery, and that many friends attended. Dorli had told me earlier that Ida wished to be cremated, so I assume that this had been done. The Web site of the Vienna Cemetry information service shows her burial date as 30 Nov 1992, and the location as Hietzing, Group 3, Row 27 Nr.55.

Dorli's love for and devotion to her mother is expressed by the text of the private death announcement she had printed up to notify friends and relatives of Ida's passing:

Eine tugendreiche Frau - wer findet sie wohl? Weit über Perlen hinaus geht ihr Wert. Stärke und Ehre sind ihr Gewand, und sie wird frohlocken in zukünftigen Tagen. (A.T., Sprüche 31).

Meine über alles geliebte Mutter, Frau Ida Birman geb. Zwierzina ist am 5. November 1992 im 97. Lebensjahr nach langer Krankheit sanft entschlafen. Mit ihr hat ein großartiger und bis zum Schluß fröhlicher Mensch diese Welt verlassen. Ihre Klugheit, ihr großes Herz und weltoffener Sinn werden allen, die sie kannten, unvergeßlich bleiben. Die Verabschiedung findet Mittwoch, den 18. November 1992, um 15 Uhr nach altkatholischer Aussegnung auf dem Friedhof Hietzing Wien, im November 1992 statt.

Signed: Hofrat Dr. Dorrit Birman im Namen aller Verwandten.

My mother, Ida Birman, born Zwierzina, whom I have loved above all else, gently passed away after a lengthy illness in her sleep on 5 November 1992 in her 97^th year. In her the World has lost a magnificent, joyful-to-the-end person whose wisdom, big heart, and world-wise sense will remain unforgettable to all who have known her. After administering the Old Catholic blessings, the memorial service will take place, at the Hietzing Cemetery at 15:00 hours on 18 November 1992

Signed: Hofrat Dr. Dorritt Birman in the name of all relatives. ^{Translation by f.g.game}

Hofrat Dr. Dorrit ("Dorli") Birman
23 Aug 1926 - 9 Aug 1993
Cousin "Dorli"
Only child of Ida Maria Zwierzina and Adolf Birman

Dorli Birman circa 1936

Left to grow up without baptism or initiation into any church (konfessionslos) owing to father being a Jew and mother having left the Catholic Church on marrying. Child very happy in spite of that. Brought up mainly by grandmother Maria (Minne) Zwierzina, who lived with her daughter and son-in-law, whereas both parents were employed full time till 1932. That year Adolf got the sack (depression?), but Ida earned enough to support the family without too much pinching. She was a Prokurist (Accounts Executive with authority to sign on behalf of the company) at a small but very successful insurance broker's (Jauch & Hübener), the Austrian branch office of a big German firm. Her boss, Herr Hübener, trusted her completely: when the probable outcome of the war became apparent in early 1944 and Hübener foresaw that all communications between Vienna & Germany would be disrupted after an armistice, he appointed Ida as sole representative, with full powers of attorney for the time after the war. Hübener was implicated in the attempt on Hitler's life in July 1944, taken prisoner and finally executed just before the end of the war. The firm, however, continued to exist.

To return to 1932: From that time on Adolf was unemployed but tried to earn money by investing in several private enterprises, particularly in collecting and subsequently selling stamps. According to Ida, he lost rather than made money, but he enjoyed himself immensely and kept up this hobby till his death in October 1972. (I have several of his stamp albums, reputedly with some valuable specimens in them, but I've never been able to interest myself in them.)

In September 1932 I was enrolled in primary school (Volkschule, Wien VI, Sonnenuhrgasse) and turned out to be one of those awful children who are actually interested in school. Particularly in reading - Karl May! No good at all at singing or art on the other hand, and needlework was a horror for me. As a result my parents decided to let me go to Gymnasium after primary school, as that was obviously what would suit me.

September 1936 - June 1938 I went to Mädchenrealgymnasium Wien VIII., Albertgasse, loved Latin and Maths, read steadily through all the books I could get hold of and began to enjoy sports: swimming, skating and tennis.

March 1938 Austria was taken over by the Germans - that meant (among other things) 6 weeks off school, and when we returned to our classes all the Jewish, or foreign, or politically unreliable teachers had been replaced by party-members and the children in every class were divided into two groups - Arians and Non-Arians and told to sit on different sides of the room. For the first time I realized that we Non-Arians constituted the majority...

In June 1938 I was packed off to my father's sister Elsa Herzog, who lived in Nové Mesto n/Váhom with her husband Gyula, to spare me the unpleasantness of being (and looking) Jewish in a Nazi environment, and the family decided that I would continue my schooling there. Unfortunately this was a very temporary solution, as it turned out, but I did pick up enough Slovakian to be able to go to school there for nearly a year and to understand what they were talking about. In the meantime my parents decided to get me out of central Europe altogether, and in June 1939 I was sent off to England (feeling very rebellious about (a) not being consulted, (b) having to leave home - Nové Mesto was more or less home to me, as I had spent many summers there - and (c) being sent to a country which I had always regarded as "our enemy"). My parents stayed put, Adolf being protected through his marriage to an Arian, but he did retire to his sister's, so as to make things easier for Ida. Besides, they had been on the brink of getting a divorce just before March 1938, so this separation was quite a good thing.

Before I forget, in Nové Mesto I was baptized and became a Roman Catholic for obvious reasons. Funnily enough, though, I took to religion like anything, temporarily, at any rate.

England 1939 - 1946: The couple who took me in were Yetta⁽²⁰⁾ and Donogh O'Brien (she from a New York Jewish family, he from a pukka-sahib family, complete with a public-school education and a mother who had spent many years in India with her husband). They had no children of their own. Donogh was one of the directors of Willis Faber & Co., the English insurance firm that was Jauch & Hübener's partner in London, and when my mother had first decided to send me to England she had asked Donogh's advice how to go about it - they had never met but did a lot of phoning on official affairs. The O'Briens were the same age as my mother, and must say I admire their generosity and courage in volunteering to look after a child that was a complete stranger to them. They made me feel very welcome too.

The outbreak of the war in September 1939 and the subsequent evacuation of children from London made the O'Briens decide to send me to boarding-school. They picked on a small private school in Bexhill-on-Sea of all places - a seaside town near the more famous Hastings, and bang on the south coast! It wasn't only the Normans and the Romans who were drawn to those beaches! The school was a rather snobbish establishment, and I was definitely the proverbial round peg in the square hole there, apart from my problems with the uniform we had to wear. Dunkirk put an end to that chapter of my life - from May 1940 till the end of the war the south coast remained out of bounds for civilians - and that was good riddance as far as I was concerned.

In the meantime Donogh had joined up, was enlisted as second lieutenant in the intelligence (he spoke three foreign languages) and posted to Egypt. Poor Yetta, left alone in London with a child on her hands and no idea where to turn - that was the summer of the Blitz. Cousins of Donogh's lived in Devonshire, and so we traveled to Exeter, went to live in a very shabby boardinghouse there and I was found a school in Tiverton. A small boarding-school again, but this time a convent-school with no social tralala. It suited me better. We had a lot of fun with school theatricals in winter and tennis in summer, but we also got lot of work done. At the end of the school-year I sat for my Oxford School Certificate (the equivalent of today's GCE, O-level) and passed with 6 distinctions and 1 credit, which gave me the right to enroll at a university. Or rather, it would have given me the right to do so. In 1941 I was 15 years of age and no university accepted students under 17; besides who would have paid the fees? A Viennese friend of mine (same age), who was also a refugee in England, was sent to a school that prepared its pupils for the scholarship examinations to Oxford or Cambridge, but that was far beyond the scope of my funny little convent-school. My friend Liesl managed to get an excellent scholarship to Oxford, did her BSc and MA there and is now Professor of Chemistry at Jerusalem University. I have often wondered why the O'Briens didn't find a better school for me - there must have been a grammar-school in Exeter, for instance. But I presume that looking back on his own schooldays Donogh thought that boarding-schools were "good for a child", and Yetta didn't have a clue, where the English education system was concerned.

Yetta had found a job in Exeter but was planning to return to London now that the Battle of Britain had been won. By this time Donogh had found a girlfriend in Cairo and was asking for a divorce, which she was loath to grant. (She did finally in 1947.)⁽²¹⁾

Yetta was very worried about her financial situation, and when I said I would like to train as a teacher she wouldn't hear of it. So in September 1941 I was sent to yet a third boarding-school at Minehead, Somerset - a convent again - to do a year's commercial course there. Which I did, but at the same time the good Rev. Mother tried me out as a student-teacher in the orphanage that was also attached to the convent. That was my chance! I stayed at Minehead for four years, taught in the primary school, helped with the boarders and went on studying in my free time: English, Latin, German and History. In return for my work I was given free board and lodging at the convent and for the last two years even a (very) small salary. Not such a bad deal for the Rev. Mother, eh? In December 1944 I sat as an external student for the Intermediate Examination in Arts at London University and passed it by the skin of my teeth. During the written papers the V1 and V2 bombing of London went on merrily, but the university was not hit. Neither was the O'Briens' flat, thank goodness.

During the war I got occasional letters from my father via an acquaintance in Switzerland, none from my mother. Towards the end of the war even those occasional contacts ceased - my father lived in constant danger of being deported and just couldn't risk writing any more - so that I had no idea whether my parents were still alive. Immediately after VE-day I started exploring ways and means of getting home again, though another whole year was to pass before I finally sat in a plane headed for Prague. I didn't return to Minehead in September 1945 but stayed in London, where I could badger the authorities for a renewal of my Czech passport and a visa for Austria. In the meantime I worked as shorthand-typist at Selfridges (long live the commercial course!) and got regular letters from both my parents. On April 26th 1946 I was finally handed a valid passport by the Czech consulate and in May I left England. After 3 weeks with my father in Nové Mesto I took the bus from Bratislava to Vienna - and believe it or not, I got through! What joy!

September 1946 - June 1950. I studied English and Latin at the University of Vienna after wangling the matriculation. The problem was that I had neither the Austrian Matura-Zeugnis (Senior Matriculation Diploma) nor had I spent the requisite number of years at school. Still, in 1946 things were still pretty haphazard, and when I waved my beautiful Oxford School Certificate in front oft their noses they were nonplused but impressed and allowed me in. By 1950, when I had to show my Matura Zeugnis again before the Lehramtsprüfungszeugnis [Teaching Certificate] was issued, the rules and regulations were firmly established again and although I already had my Ph.D. there was no getting round the fact that I had never taken Matura. Luckily a kind soul in the Ministry of Education decided in my favor and nostrifizierte my School Certificate. Ende gut, alles gut [all is well that ends well]. (Date of PhD: Feb 1950. Austrian Citizen since 1948).

Dorli as principal of girls' classical high school on Parhamer Platz, Vienna

September 1950 - December 1973: Teaching. "I started as a student teacher in Wien 13, Wenzgasse and after this Probejahr (trial year) I was transferred to Wien 8, Langegasse at the request of the headmistress there who happened to be a very good friend of mine. I stayed at her school for over 20 years, and this was a very happy time for me. A year as an exchange teacher in Aberdeen (1961/62) was also a success. But after twenty years I began to feel bored and looked round for new fields of glory. There is not much you can do with my qualifications, though, except go up the ladder of promotion, and that's how I became a headmistress. Jan. 1st 1974 - Nov. 30th 1989. Head of Gymnasium Wien 17, Parhamerplatz 18. A challenge, periods of strife, periods of genuine satisfaction. A lonely business, though. In September 1981 I was awarded the title Hofrat, on retiring in 1989 I received  Das Große Ehrenzeichen für Verdienste um die Republik Österreich.        click to enlarge

Dorli returned to Vienna in 1946 to Brückengasse 4, the same apartment her mother has been occupying since 1926 (both she and her mother kept on living at that address until their respective deaths, Ida in Nov 1992 and Dorli in August 1993.

By coincidence the Gymnasium at Parhamerplatz where she became headmistress happened to be the former Hernalser Offizierstöchter Bildungs Institut where two of her aunts were raised. (The oldest daughter Anna, and the youngest daughter Grete). The "Orden" (Das Große Ehrenzeichen ...) comes with a big red-enameled star like the order of something or other. It is impressive and quite pretty and would look good worn on a diagonal ribbon over a formal evening gown. Dorli retired in December of 1989 and devoted herself to the care of her mother. She did manage to get out, and her mother did insist in 1990 that Dorli go and take a trip to Spain.

Mother and daughter: Ida (93), and Dorli (63) Xmas 1989

After she lost her mother in November of 1992, Dorli could not stand the thought of spending Christmas alone in the same apartment where she had lived most of her life with her beloved mother. She made travel arrangements and spent a couple of weeks in Israel, which she found quite fascinating. Then she sold Ida's bedroom furniture and bough something more modern and turned the former bedroom into a sitting room while continuing to sleep in her awkward bed of 35 years in her den. She spent a small fortune having the bathroom brought up-to-date, which in the old Viennese buildings of solid plastered masonry walls is a big task and took about three weeks.

She was to finally give in to my many invitations to spend a summer in Canada, but Axi, originally her mother's cat, but now Dorli's, was starting to suffer from the deteriorating health of an old cat. In order to not impose a sick animal on strangers, or to inflict the stay in an animal hostelry on Axi for too long, she decided to postpone the Canada visit for another year, and go to one of the Corinthian Lakes for the last two weeks in August. She felt that she would be able to respond to a call if Axi's condition deteriorated further, and be in Vienna in about two hours. On 15 July 1993 Dorli wrote a long and cheerful letter reporting about the finished plumbing, the new arrangement in her apartment, and how I will like it when next I visit Vienna. She also mentioned that Axi had reacted very favorably to a change in antibiotics, and had developed a good appetite. She was all set to go for her scheduled stay in Corinthia.

About the same time I was also trying to refine arrangements for a European trip to accompany my wife Jean who had to go to Graz on business the middle of October, and to meet up with a fellow genealogist from California who was going to Hungary at the same time. I wanted Dorli to show Jean around for a few days in Vienna while I was doing research in Hungary. I started to phone her the 1st of September, and several times every day for the next two weeks until we had to leave on our boating vacation in the Chesapeake Bay. There was never an answer, although the phone seemed to be ringing. I even had the Vienna operator check once to make sure I was not making a mistake, and she confirmed that the number was correct, but there was no answer. Two days after our return from the boat, on September 30th I received the notification of death. Dorli had died suddenly on 9 Aug 1993 "in a Vienna hospital after a short illness".

This was so sudden that it made the news even more devastating. She had been in excellent health, and the letter written three weeks before her death sounded full of zest, and in every way very positive. The notice had been composed by her close friend, a widow of three years, Mag. Hilde Leiter, who luckily had her complete address printed along with her name. I tried to reach her by phone but failed because, as I later found out, she was in Kopenhagen for a few days. I gave up phoning and wrote her instead, introducing myself, and asking to please fill me in with details. Hilde Leiter's reply arrived within seven days, and told the strange sequence of events in these words:

On the 30th of Aug. [she means July] Dorli and I had wanted to go swimming. She called me and said she had a cough. So we drove to Laxenburg - it was a hot forenoon - and drove around there in an electric boat. Later we ate lunch at the Insel Restaurant. During the latter part of that afternoon Dorli called me, and asked how I felt. I said I was feeling fine. She complained about a great tiredness, and that she was perspiring. I advised her to see a doctor, which she only did on 2 August. Since she loved her cat above all, she only allowed herself to be treated as an outpatient (during the day) in the Hospital of the Sisters of Charity (Barmherzigen Schwestern), and went home evenings to look after the animal. After a few days Dorli could no longer manage that and put Axi in a home for animals. I spoke to Dorli on the telephone for the last time on the 7th August. She complained of severe back pains. On the 9th, early in the afternoon I visited Dorli (name of patients and room numbers were posted on a board). When I had found the room, there was a sign saying "No Admittance". I asked at the nurses' station what the meaning of this was, and she told me that Dr. Birman was in a bad, bad way. I was allowed in briefly. Around the bed were the Chief of staff (Primarius), a younger doctor and two nurses. I took Dorli's hand and said "it is me, Hilde". There was palpable tension in the air. The head doctor then said "She is dying, she does not hear you", and then added "unless a miracle occurs". Well, none occurred. When I called the nurses' station that evening I was simply told that Dorli had passed away. I am still of the opinion that something went wrong. Her death certificate however states that she died of purulent bronchitis (eitriger Bronchitis). ^{My translation}

Mrs. Hilde Leiter says in her letter that Dorli had a very proper funeral. The notice I received mentions a service held at the Hietzing cemetery on 23 August at 15:00 hours after the "Old-Catholic" rite. That her urn was deposited on the 30 August 1993 at 11 a.m. at the cemetery in Hietzing. That there was also a memorial mass held at the "Old-Catholic" Bishop-Cyprian church (15 Rauchfangkehrergasse 12) on Sunday 29 August 1993 at 10 a.m. I was subsequently provided by the notary in charge of winding up the estate with a copy of her death certificate, and her Testament. Dorli had left all her worldly goods to the Ludwig Boltzmann Gesellschaft with particular direction to use the money for leukemia-related research. According to Mrs. Leiter, one of Dorli's close friends had died of leukemia.

The notary, Dr. Kurt Fürst, did not even comment in his letter about my formal demand to be handed all the papers, documents etc. which are of genealogical value to the family, but Mrs. Leiter was able to get them and mailed them to me.

4. Ida Zwierzina
23 Nov 1861 - 6 Apr 1933
Mrs. Emil Wolf
Fourth child of Johann Nepomuk Alois Maria Zwierzina and Anna Edle von Steinberg

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Ida Wolf (née Zwierzina) and daughter Irma.

It is important to differentiate between this Ida Zwierzina¹⁸⁶¹ who became Mrs. Wolf and the above mentioned Ida Zwierzina¹⁸⁹⁶ who became Mrs. Birman.

Ida Zwierzina was born 23 November 1861 as the fourth daughter of Johann Muki Zwierzina and Anna née Edle von Steinberg.^fggdoc55 She married Emil Wolf, and had a daughter Irma Wolf (1882-1957) who had no children. Ida died 1933 in Bad Ischl where her death is documented in the register of the Roman Catholic Parish Volume XI, page 82, row 41.^fggdoc193

This Ida was Emil Zwierzina's (my father's) godmother. Idi Birman thinks he was either called Emil after Emil Wolf, or she acted as godmother because he was going to be christened the same name as her husband. Possibly it is simply a coincidence.

There is an inconsistency to this story, in that Emo's baptism certificate shows the Patin (godmother) as "Ida Zwierzina, Private" and not as Ida Wolf, even though her daughter Irma would have been 9 years old by that time. Ida Birman insists, that Ida the Pate, had indeed been long married to Mr. Wolf by then. This could, however, be just the way the priest had entered it (instead of using the customary way of showing the woman's married name and add her maiden name as a qualifier). More recently, another version came from the Rainer Branch who calls Mr. Wolf a "stepfather". This would mesh with the above mentioned discrepancy. There is every chance that Ida had a daughter Irma quite some time before she was married. It is now impossible to tell where Mr.Wolf fits in, although it is quite possible that he was in fact the natural father of Irma.

According to the Birman memory bank, Ida Wolf is buried in Bad Ischl, and her daughter Irma was buried in Goisern 1957. Both places are in the beautiful district called Salzkammergut where I grew up, and neither would be a bad place to be buried in. I later obtained confirmation that Ida Wolf had died on 6 April 1933 in Bad Ischl. The confirmation letter from the Bad Ischl municipal offices cites the Roman Catholic parish register Tom. XI, page 82, line 41. They were, however, unable to find a record of the death of Irma Wolf in the 1957 death records of Goisern, Upper Austria.^fggdoc193

Irma Wolf
1882 - 1957
Only child of Emil Wolf and Ida Zwierzina
Granddaughter of Johann Nepomuk Maria Zwierzina

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My no-nonsense cousin Dorli describes Irma Wolf as pretty and gifted in painting and languages, and since she was the only child of the well-off Wolfs, she was a spoiled brat who refused to finish any kind of formal schooling (having hysterics before examinations, etc.). She enjoyed being courted but did not want to accept any of the offers she got. (It later turned out that she was Lesbian in her tastes.) When her father died and the family fortunes rapidly deteriorated, her only reaction was that life was not fair. She had never held a job apart from keeping house for her lady-friend in later years.

After returning from England, Dorli met Irma several times, once to spend a week near Bad Ischl, and once Irma stayed with the Birmans in Vienna for a few days. Dorli remembers that she used to squirm with embarrassment at the way Irma spoke about mutual acquaintances. Dorli considered her "giftig" (venomous). Ida Birman remembers, that in earlier years Irma got along well with her cousin Hans (the flyer), and that they had both moved in the same circles. This may explain Irma's more than passing interest in the activities of Hans' wife Anny. When I was about 15 years old, at the end of World War II. two women came to Gmunden to visit my father Emo. I do not remember who they were, but with some help from cousins Ida and Dorli, we have concluded that one of them was Irma (Wolf), and the other probably Mitzerl, with whom Irma had a romantic friendship to her death. Ida had said that Irma had died and was buried in Goisern 1957, but the municipal office there could not find any record of this. ^fggdoc135

5. A Boy
12 Dec 1862 - 12 Dec 1862
Fifth child of Johann Nepomuk Alois Maria Zwierzina and Anna Edle von Steinberg.

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So ended the last pregnancy for Anna Steinberg. She delivered the first male child on 12 December 1862, and died in the process. Considering the tone and content of her letter to her husband just six weeks before her death, the thought is unavoidable that she may have had a premonition.

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Second marriage of Johann Nepomuk Alois Maria Zwierzina

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Emma Thomala
16 May 1841 - 29 Sep 1872
"Mutter Emma"
Second Wife of Johann Nepomuk Alois Maria Zwierzina
Daughter of Joseph Thomala and Anna née Holl

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Little is known about this wife. She was born in house #109 of Uherské Hradišté on 16 May 1841 as the daughter of the Kameralkomissär Joseph Thomala and his wife Anna, née Holl. (Anna Holl was the daughter of Franz Holl and Anna, daughter of Bernhard Pressl. It is obvious from the dates that she was 16 years younger than the widower, captain Johann Nepomuk Zwierzina who had four daughters from his first wife.

Dorli had learned from her mother Ida, who had learned it from her mother Minne, that Emma Thomala was referred to as "Mutter Emma" (Mother Emma) in the family. Ida Birman said that her mother Minne had really liked Emma because she was so good with the children. Ida Birman initially reported that Emma had had nine children from her marriage with Johann Nepomuk. The number of years available between the first and the third wives does not support that number. I have calculated that in order to fit nine births in between the year of death of the first wife, and the date of marriage to the third wife, Muki and Emma Thomala would have had to get started in 1863 and have a child every year from 1864 to 1872. Until other evidence is discovered, I am going to think in terms of a maximum of four children from this second marriage.

During 1868/69 he is reported to be residing at Smechov near Prague (is this the same as "St. Veit near Prague" and/or "Bishofslack"?) Could he have been co-habiting there with Emma Thomola? Would this be where earlier children by Emma are to be found registered? The military records (Grundbuchblatt) show the marriage on 2 February 1869 ("ohne Kaution auf Grund des neuen Wehrgesetzes [von] April 1869"). Since the Kaution, or marriage bond were of great significance in the lives of career officers, their marriage in the very year that it was officially abolished may have a hidden meaning. If the story of "nine children" is in fact true, then the possibility must be considered that Muki and Emma may have been cohabiting since 1863 and were only married when the new regulations permitted marriages without the posting of a marriage bond.⁽²²⁾ While this is possible, it is highly unlikely considering the social status of a captain and of Emma's father, who was one of the district commissaries of what later was called the Ministry of Finance, as well as a voting member of its district court. The following segment from page 527 shows Cameral Bezirkscommissär Joseph Thomala as voting member of the Tax-Court for the District of Hradisch.

Muki's Grundbuchblatt also shows that in 1869 they moved from Unter St.Veit to Bischoflack. It has not been possible for a long time to find the location of Bischoflack; probably because I had thought it to be a suburb of Vienna. When located, however, it turned out to be a town in Slovenia which is now known as Skofja Loka (probably the same town that is mentioned in erwin Rommel's book "Infantrie greift an"). My inquiries in the summer of 2000 via a local genealogist colleague (Peter Hawlina), as well as by mail to Nadskofijski archiv Ljubljana netted the result that no birth records for any children of Johann Zwierzina could be found in either the St. Jacob parish in Skofja Loka, or the St.Jurij parish in Stara Loka. At one point there seemed to be information suggesting that there may have been a Bischofslack in Bohemia near Prague. After checking the Czech map where German place names are cross-referenced, and checking the Austro-Hungarian Gazetteer and also querying Google on the Web, I have to accept that there is not now or has ever been a locality named Bischoflack in the Czech Republick.

Because Johann Nepomuk married Helene Gottlieb in 1873, I had speculated that Emma died in 1872 during yet another delivery, or that she fell victim to the same illness which killed her children. Documents found later confirmed this hunch: Emma Zwierzina, neé Thomala died on 29 September 1872 at 07:45 of "eclampsia following delivery". Her death was very sudden and there was no time to call a priest for administering the last rights. She was examined on September 30th by a Dr. Morgenstern of Währing (report #1320), and then buried on 1 October 1872 at 16:00 hours.^fggdoc139

6. Hubert Zwierzina about 1870 - circa 1885
Son of Johann Nepomuk Alois Maria Zwierzina and Emma Thomala

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A boy, Hubert Zwierzina survived to the age of 15 when he died of "Lungenschwindsucht" (Tuberculosis). He had been taken over by Helene Gottlieb, who was very good to him, and whom he had loved as a mother. Apparently at the end, when he was dying, he raised his arms towards her when he heard her come in his room, and then died (in Vienna).

 

7. Emil Rudolf Zwierzina
29 Sep 1872 -?
Last child of Johann Nepomuk Alois Maria Zwierzina and Emma Thomala

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Through a lucky accident an entry turned up in the Register of Baptisms of the Wien-Gersthof parish, where so many other papers had already been found. According to that entry,^fggdoc138 a boy child named Emil Rudolf was born to Johann Zwierzina, k.k. Hauptmann in Pension, and his wife Emma Thomala on 29 September 1872 at Gersthof Nr.48. The baby was baptized on 2 October - on the third day after the birth, (telling us that the child had survived at least that long). The Godmother was Mrs. Anna Marschner, wife of a Controlor of the K.F. Nordbahn, resident of Wien-Leopoldstadt, Cirkusgasse Nr.45.

There is additional, important information contained in this entry of baptism: Emma's parents are named Joseph Thomala, k.k Kameralkommissär in Hradisch, and his wife Anna, born Holl. A comment indicates that a marriage certificate had been seen from the parish of Hradisch (Moravia), where Johann and Emma were married on 2 February 1869.

In the birth record of Emil Rudolf a little cross is written in above the name of Emma, which caused me to ask Mr. Hagmann of the Wien-Gersthof parish to have yet another look in his registers. He did find the entry in the Register of Deaths on the 29th of September 1872 as expected.^fggdoc139 It is stated in that record that Emma Zwierzina, wife of the pensioned k.k. Captain Johann Zwierzina died suddenly of eclampsia after the delivery.

Perhaps the most important detail contained in this document is the spelling of Emma's name: Thomala, and not Thomola as I had understood it to be, and as indeed it looked in the military document I saw in 1989 at the Kriegsarchiv in Vienna (the Grundbuchblatt of Johann Nepomuk Alois Zwierzina).

The town of Hradisch certainly takes on much more significance than I had suspected. The marriage to Emma in Hradisch can now be confirmed. I knew that Johann Nepomuk's father Johann was born there, and that his grandfather had been the brew-master there, and now that the Thomala family's location has been confirmed as Hradisch also, a concerted effort should be made to find documentation linking the two families. Who, for example were the witnesses at the marriage? Could grandfather still have had some relatives there in 1869 who would have attended?

8. Unknown Child

 

9. Unknown Child

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Third marriage of Johann Nepomuk Alois Maria Zwierzina

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Helene Franziska Gottlieb 30 Jul 1849 - 12 Jul 1888
Third Wife of Johann Nepomuk Alois Maria Zwierzina
Daughter of Edmund Gottlieb and Maria née Schneider

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Helene Franziska Gottlieb, daughter of Edmund Gottlieb and Maria (née Schneider) was born 30 July 1849 and baptized in Roman Catholic church of St. Thomas in Brünn (now Brno, Czech Republic). When she was 24 years old she married Johann Muki Zwierzina on 11 Oct 1873 in the Roman Catholic parish in Wien-Hernals, where they were living at Hauptstraße 108 at the time. He was 48 years old, and had been widowed twice - the last time one year ago. The witnesses at the marriage were (1) Johann Wehr (Reserve Offizier), resident of Wien-Ottakring, Rittergasse 28, and (2) Karl Gottlieb, (Beamter), resident of Neubau, Guttenbergplatz 23.^fggdoc50 He died 3 weeks later.

During the fifteen years of their marriage she bore ten children, 2 boys and eight girls. Only five girls are known to have reached adulthood. Helene Gottlieb died at the age of 39 years while giving birth to her tenth child on 12 July 1888 at Wien-Gersthof, Neuwaldeggerstraße 37.^fggdoc42

According to cousin Ida Birman, who knew them, "the Gottlieb girls had long heavy pigtails". She also thought that there was something wrong with their bloodline because Melanie was an epileptic, and Valerie, who was very pretty, had clubfeet. Ida knew one of Helen's relatives (cousin or uncle) who owned and operated a cinema called "Kommt und Seht" (come and see) am Graben in Vienna. He was a bit of a showman and delighted in having people give him problems which he would then solve for them. He was a very large man and had a nice wife.

10. Hermann Leopold Zwierzina
20 Nov 1874 - 11 Dec 1874
1st child of Johann Nepomuk Alois Maria Zwierzina and Helene Franziska Gottlieb

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Hermann Leopold Zwierzina, first child of the third marriage was born 20 November at Steinergasse 1, and christened 22 November 1874 at the Roman Catholic parish at Wien-Hernals. His birth was assisted by the midwife Maria Mathias whose address was Blumengasse 26. Godparents (Paten) were Leopold Holzinger, leather merchant, and his wife Maria, residents of Fuhrmannsgasse 15 in the 8th District of Vienna. Hermann died three weeks later on 11 December 1874.^fggdoc51

11. Helene Eulalia Johanna Zwierzina

12 Dec 1875 - 1947?
Mrs. Hjalmar Simesen
2nd child of Johann Nepomuk Alois Maria Zwierzina and Helene Franziska Gottlieb

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Helene Zwierzina, the second child of Johann Muki Zwierzina and his third wife Franziska (nee Gottlieb) was born 12 December 1875 at Wien-Währing.^fggdoc55 A list of people entitled to resident status in Brno (Kataster der Heimatberechtigten) erroneously shows Helene Eulalia as being of the second marriage rather than the third (the entry should have said "second child of the third marrage") it does, however, confirm the date and place of her birth, as does her baptism entry and a Meldezettel of her visit to Vienna in 1914. From some cryptic entries, in the column reserved for resident status-related comments, are some hints at bureaucratic activity between 1903 and 1906. The first entry "H1905" (followed by an illegible character) states that a document had been "rendered unusable" because it was a forgery apparently dating to 1880. The next reference "97872/1906 Zürich" is followed by "H20-1906". We do know that she left Europe in 1906 and emigrated to Rio de Janeiro, Brasil. At the same time there are similarly cryptic entries in the column reserved for "occupation": 1903A, below that: Z or 7 followed by 998 21, where the '21' is placed above a Roman III; all of this is followed by "1903". A faint number (probably pencil) looks like "70990".

My speculative interpretation is influenced by Cousin Ida's story that Helene emigrated to Brazil. In 1903 she was 28 years old and must have been working for at least ten years already. The mention of Zürich may indicate that cross-border travel may have featured in her life, as it would have if a person were employed in the tourist industry, for example, where seasonal migration of hotel and restaurant workers is the norm.

Cousin Ida told me that: "Helene accepted employment in Rio de Janeiro, where she became very ill with something like yellow fever, and lost all her hair.⁽²³⁾ After she recovered she met and married a man named Simesen who was a well-to-do Reeder (ship owner). She had three miscarriages, and no surviving children. She was a very nice person, helped her sisters from afar, and even came to Vienna once to visit (sisters Melanie and Valerie came from Brno for the occasion)." Although sketchy, cousin Ida's story is a fair recital of what had happened. It was all hearsay from memory, and although extremely sharp, Ida was 93 years old when she told this to me. Ida was also 20 years younger than Helene and everytghing she knew had been told to her by others (most likely her mother). The name of the man that Helene married in Rio had never been seen by the relatives, so variatins of Simesen were tossed around at random. Luckily, many years later, some Austrian documents became available to the author which then showed that the correct spelling of his name was Simesen.

In June 2000 through a happy coincidence, I made contact with Joao Marcos Weguelin, journalist/author in Rio de Janeiro, who asked me to find an obscure Hungarian Prince of the 9^th century. I agreed to do research for him if he tried to find my aunt Helene.  Weguelin found in some Rio government records the following information about Helene:

She did not obtain an identity card for foreigners between 1939 and 1977 - at least there is no record of it (such cards started to be issued in 1939).

There is no record of a marriage in the records up to 1947.

She had not become a Brazilian citizen (Naturalizations were checked from 1900 to 1949).

Did find four documents, one from 1912 and one from 1914. These documents deal with buying a house - a boarding house, something like a family hotel - the word is also used for family restaurant. The documents are difficult to read.  (This was clarified in August 2007 (byAlessandra Walkiers Pierro of Rio) to have been a Pensôe (very similar to the word used in Austria for small private hotels: "Pension". See an example of a Rio Pension of that vintage).

She was living in Rio de Janeiro, and she was a woman who had a commercial business.

Document 1: She is buying on 28 August 1912 a house, which is believed to be a boarding house in Rua Alm. Carlos Primero número 39 for 15 contos de réis (sale price).

Document 2: This is a legal document or deed of official additament. It does not state if she was married, but there is a person - unable to read the first name, but the surname would be something like Simosen -) who was her warrantor. Date is 28 August 1912. (As it turned out from later research by the author, the warrantor's name was Hjalmar Simesen, the man she later married).

Document 3: Is a renting or leasing contract, dated 29 August 1912.

Document 4: Dated 18 July 1914, it is a rescission of leasing or renting , of the lease contract between a person Zwierzina and that same man ?L? Semiesen or something ..."awful writing"... (see note above: the name was Hjalmar Simesen). The procurator of Helene was called Alfredo Joaquim Ribeiro (All the note/document service (official letters) in all the trade offices; numbers 1,3,5,7,8,10,11,12,14, 15, 16, 18.

<my comment: "rescission" means the lease or rental contract was cancelled..>. (the author wonders whether it was at this point that a business deal turned into a relationship, or that a decision was made that Helene would marry Hjalmar Semison?). It seems however, as explained to me later by the above mentioned Alessandra, a Rio-based attorney, that the Rio laws played an important role in this. A spouse, or even just a concubine were found to be an important actor, and would be declared a "warrantor" in any such transaction, and in effect this warrantor owned everything. From that alsmost anything can be deduced, such as Helene and Hjalmar were already married, or cohabiting. The recission, or cancelling, of this legal oddity could indicate the sale of the property, or perhaps a change in the legal status of their relationship.

These research results of Mr. Weguelin would seem to establish that between 1912 and 1914 she was not only living in Rio de Janeiro, but was purchasing a house, to be more precise, a boarding house in Rua Alm, on 28 August 1912 for the sum of 15 contos de réis. She had a guarantor whose name was something very close to Simesen but was almost impossible to read on the record. On 18 July 1914 there was a rescission (canceling) of the lease contract. Her agent for these transactions was Alfredo Joaquim Ribeiro. More information may yet come from Rio, but even at this point another item of oral tradition handed me by cousin Ida has been proven as factual. Thanks Ida, thanks Joao Marcos Weguelin! ^fggdoc288

Crucial additional information was found in the Hamburg passenger list through the Web-based "Link to your Roots service" in April 2005. Provided is the exact date of her departure from Europe (20 April 1906), the name of the ship, and the destination Rio de Janeiro. This Document also contains the surprising fact that Helene Zwierzina, a 31 year-old single woman was traveling not on a typical immigrant ship but in first class accommodations on the Steamer "Prinz Joachim" of the Hamburg-America Line. She obvious did not emigrate penniless, and the cryptic entries in the Czech documents are starting to make more sense since the preparations for such a journey would require plenty of interaction with the burocracy.

Written inquiries in both English and Portuguese to the RC Diocese in Rio, the Civil authorities in Rio and the Brazilian embassy in Ottawa were not answered by any of those parties. Brazilians do not seem to believe in answering mail.

Since my experience as genealogist indicated that the parish where a person was baptized usually received a notification from another parish who may be involved in a marriage ceremony of the baptized. I had made inquiries to the home parish in Vienna where Helene was baptized. The home parish in Vienna has never been contacted in any such matter.

A later discovered relative's husband (Helmut Rainer) shows Helene's year of death as 1947 in his records. The source of this information appears to be a distant relative named Luise Weber (daughter of one of Helene's sisters, who repeated this information verbally to my cousin Johanna Rainer (née Zwierzina). The author is presently in contact with Alessandra Walckiers Pierro of Rio de Janeiro, who is being helpful and has provided some vintage pictures of Rio.

The important break-through happened in October 2007 when my query about any relevant Meldezettel   was responded to by the Vienna Magistratsabteilung 8.  These Meldezettel are required to be filled out any time someone moves in Vienna. A visit from outside or a departure to other places qualifies as a move. They were kind enough to attach two of the relevant Meldezettel, and what these documents confirm are of great importance and interest. They confirm that Helene was back visiting in Vienna between 20 August and 10 Sep 1914. She stayed in the 18th district at Messerschmittgasse 34, 2nd floor, door number 16.  The slip is signed by Hedwig Weber, presumably a sister of Helene. Helene's "previous address" is shown as Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.  Her intended next destination was shown as Kopenhagen, Denmark. Personal data shown on the same slip identify her as Helene Zwierzina, Private, born in Vienna, domicile entitlement to Brünn (Brno, Czech Republic), 38 years old, born 12 Dec 1875, catholic, single.  The previous address is shown as Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. To me this means that after 9 years of living in Rio, and having known Hjalmar Simesen since 1912, she was not married to him at this point.

 The next Meldezettel received in October 2007 is dated 3 September 1928. i.e. 14 years later than the previous one. This one is for Hjalmar Simesen, or more precisely Hjalmar Louis Normand Simesen (there are two different hand writings involved and the first is larger and more natural and spells the name"Simesen" while the second appears to be a different person's writing and more pedantic about appearance but less concerned with correctness (it seems that only the dot on the "i" is missing for Simesen, and the second scribe misread a skinny "'e" as an "i"). This document shows Hjalmar's profession as "director", born at Flensborg, Denmark, Danish citizen, born 9 June 1857, is a Protestant and married. The wife's name is given as Helene Eulalia Johanna Zwierzina. No children under 18 years old. Former residence in Vienna is answered with "none". Regular residence is Rio, Brazil.  Previous residence before Rio was Copenhagen. Travel document is identified as a Danish passport. Austrian visum is not required.  He stayed at the "Pension Theresianum", Wien VI, Mayerhofgasse 4, Mezzanin, and his destination upon leaving on 12 March 1929 was Rio de Janeiro.

 By way of documenting the genealogiccal details of Hjalmar Simesen, as obtained from Bjorn Arne Skinnerup, indicate that he was the son of Rasmus Johannes Simesen and Fanny Ludovica Le Normand de Bretteville, that he had married September 1883, in Buenos Aires, Jenny Johansen born 2 Feb 1861 in Kobenhavn. They had 2 sons: (1) Vagn Halfdan Simesen, born 21 June 1884 in Kobnhavn. (2) Franklin  Le Normand Simesen, born 2 June 1888 in Mendoza, died 19 Nov 1888. As a final comment, it is not relevant what happened to Hjalmar's son Franklin, since he is not related by blood. It would be, however nice to obtain details of how many children - if any - Helene may have had and what they died of. Since this is recorded as strictly hearsay information obtained via Ida Zwierzina, it is very possible that Helene during her first and only visit back to see the family, did not tell exactly what had happened, and possibly there were no children at all, or at least none that were live births.  This author is content with the knowledge that no living relatives of Zwierzina blood exist as a result of that union.

This confirmes the most important items of the initial aural information: Helene did arrive in Rio de Janeiro in 1906, did go into the "pension" business, did meet and eventually married Hjalmar Simesen, a director, a Danish national born at Flensborg, Denmark on 9 June 1857, and their marriage did not have any surviving children. (Hjalmar answered that question on the Meldezettel Before moving to Rio, and stated that he was residing at Kopenhagen.   He left Vienna 12.3.1929.

 

12. Stefanie Ludmilla Zwierzina

13 Dec 1876 - 13 Dec 1876
3rd child of Johann Nepomuk Alois Maria Zwierzina and Helene Franziska Gottlieb

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Stefanie Zwierzina, third child of the third marriage was born 13 December 1876 at Wien-Währing^fggdoc55. I believe she only lived long enough to be given a name, because there is a little cross marked where her birth is entered in the military records of her father. She also shows up on the Kataster list number 155664 of those entitled to resident status in Brno. It confirms the date and place of birth, provides the second given name Ludmilla, and shows her religion as Catholic.

13. Melanie Zwierzina

8 Jun 1878 - ? 4th child of Johann Nepomuk Alois Maria Zwierzina and Helene Franziska Gottlieb

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Melanie Zwierzina, fourth child of the third marriage was born 8 June at Neuwaldeggerstraße 52, and baptized on 23 June 1878 in the Roman Catholic parish of St. Leopold in Wien-Gersthof.^fggdoc45 Her birth was assisted by the midwife Josefa Sippmann of Gersthof, Feldgasse 90. Melanie's 19 year-old half-sister Emilie Zwierzina of Hernals, Kirchengasse 68 was acting as Godmother. Cousin Ida told me that Melanie had epilepsy, and lived in the Offiziersinvalidenheim (some sort of home for military invalids) in Brünn. Believed to have died in Brünn (now Brno, Czech Republic).

When a copy of the Katasterblatt (Roll)^fggdoc251-4a of those entitled to resident status in Brno was obtained, some additional information became available: First the month of birth is different and shows 8/2 1878 (8 Feb instead 8 June ... a normal way of expressing in Austria a date "the eigth[day] of the second[month] of [the year] xxxx) - a visual confirmation of document #45 (photocopy of the original parish entry) confirmed that 8 June is correct, with 23 June being the date of baptism. Her occupation appears as Dienstmagd (maid), but 4 subsequent entries seem to indicate that in 1906, 1910 and 1912 she was in a "Vers.Anst." Chovanka. Which I interpret to be "the ward of a Versorgungsanstalt" ( a public institution for the housing and care of challenged persons). "Chovanka" according to some Google sources means "ward" (as in ward of and institution). This would agree with Ida's statement of Melanie being in a home because of her Epilepsy. A cryptic entry which has to do with her resident status shows a number "Dl.1921-147" with "in Wien" penciled in. Could this mean that she was staying or visiting in Vienna in 1921? Would this have been the time her sister Helene came over from Rio de Janeiro? Helene would have been 46 years old.

 14. Johann Zwierzina
4 Jun 1879 - 25 Mar 1882
5^th child of Johann Nepomuk Alois Maria Zwierzina and Helene Gottlieb

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Johann's existence was not known until he showed up on the Kataster listing number 155664 of those entitled to resident status in Brno. Shown as born in Weinhaus near Wien on 4/6 1879, Catholic and single. His death is also entered as 25/3 1882 in Wien-Währing; EZ. 27870/1900.^fggdoc251-4a

15. Sofie Zwierzina
7 Dec 1880 -
6^th child of Johann Nepomuk Alois Maria Zwierzina and Helene Gottlieb

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Sofie's existence was not known to me until she showed up on the Kataster listing number 155664 of people holding resident status in Brno. There is nothing else entered for Sofie beside her date of birth (7/12 1880), the name of the parish (Währing), her religion as Catholic and her status as single.^fggdoc251-4a

16. Valerie Marie Zwierzina
10 April 1884 - 1945
7^th child of Johann Nepomuk Alois Maria Zwierzina and Helene Franziska Gottlieb

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Valerie and Martha were sisters, Friedrich was first believed to be the husband of their sister Hedwig, but it turned out to be perhaps Hedwig's father-in-law. Photo courtesy Roman D'Alessio

Valerie Zwierzina, seventh child of the third marriage was born 10 April 1884 at Weinhaus.^fggdoc55 Cousin Ida told me that she was pretty, but was born with a clubfoot (Klumpfüßig) and lived in the Offiziersinvalidenheim (a home for military invalids) in Brünn with her sister Melanie who was there because of her epilepsy. She thought that Valerie had died in Brünn (now Brno, Czech Republic), but then I obtained a photograph of the grave in Vienna's Zentralfriedhof which Valerie shares with her sister Martha, and Friedrich Weber, who appears to be her sister Hedwig's fater-in-law. Since the year of her death was 1945, it is more than likely that she made her way to Vienna at, or just before the end of the war to escape from the advancing Russian troops, or that she became one of the victims of the large-scale expulsion of ethnic Germans by the post-war Communist Rulers of Chechoslovakia. Her burial in Vienna seems to indicate that she made it that far, despite her club foot and the fact she was already 61 years old, and that she found and was received a helping hand from her Viennese married sisters Hedwig and Martha.

New information obtained from the Kataster List number 155681 of those entitled to resident status in Brno^fggdoc251-6confirmed that Valerie had been baptized in the parish of Weinhaus, was of Catholic religion and single, and her occupation is shown as "Bonne" (maid). When she was 27 she had a son Johann out of wedlock in 1911 who died on 2/9 1911 in Nagylévárd (Velké Leváre) in the district of Malackai of the county of Pozsony), Hungary at the age of 6 weeks. A reference number is given for the entry of the death: Zl:78.783/1913.^fggdoc251-6 Other entries on her form indicate that a Heimatschein had been issued 1905-20, and a difficult to read entry indicates that she was in a Versorgungsanstalt (a public institution for the housing and care of challenged persons). She seems to have been given a Gnadengabe (alms) of 140 (unknown currency) under the Reference number Zl:78.783/1913. In 1913 she is shown as staying in the 8^th district of Vienna at Kochgasse 19, which I recognize to have been my grandmother's, the widow's Maria Zwierzina née Kutschera's address , who was also Valerie's stepmother.

Since Valerie's name appears on the grave stone with a death year of 1945, and since we know that most ethnic Germans were evicted from Brno and forced to leave the country on foot (known as the "Death March") which caused a large number of them to die in the process. It must be assumed that she was also forced into participating of this death march, and that she somehow made it to Vienna where she knew she had "family" but she may have arrived at the end of her strength and endurance and died soon after. Considering that she had a clubfoot, the torture of such a march is almost inconceivable. She probably made it on good old Zwierzina stubborness. Bless her heart and soul.

17. Hedwig Marie Zwierzina
21 September 1885 - 1 Aug 1953
Mrs. Friedrich ("Fritz") Weber
8^th child of Johann Nepomuk Alois Maria Zwierzina and Helene Franziska Gottlieb

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Valerie and Martha were sisters, Friedrich was probably the father of Hedwig's husband. Photo courtesy Roman D'Alessio

Hedwig Zwierzina, eighth child of the third marriage was born 21 September 1885 at Wien-Währing.^fggdoc55 Hedwig appears on a Brno Kataster list with her occupation shown as Kammerjungfer (lady in waiting). She married Fritz Weber, and they had a daughter Luise born in 1914. Luise had no children. On 4 July 1919 Fritz Weber was my father Emo's witness at his marriage to Felicitas Ramberg in Vienna. Fritz was residing at the time at Messerschmidtgasse 34. Hedwig's last known address was Wien 18, Messerschmidtgasse 24/16. The Zentralmeldeamt of Vienna provided on 2 Aug 1996 her date of death as 1 Aug 1953. The Reference given was Standesamt Währing, Buch Nr.759/53).^fggdoc240

Hedwig's daughter Luise Weber was born 10 June 1910 - as per date provided by cousin Johanna Rainer (née Zwierzina), who knew her personally. Not much is known about her life, except that she may have been a lonely soul and basically unhappy, which is a pity seeing that she was an attractive young woman at one point. She had rented a summer home in Bad Ischl so that she could be closer to the Rainers (Johanna probably being the only living true relative with Zwierzina blood in her veins). Another attempt at research by Erika Ulbing of Vienna, in 1996 at the Zentralfriedhof indicated that it was Luise Weber who had maintained the grave where her grandfather ( a guess) and her aunts Martha Pelikan (neé Zwierzina), and Valerie Zwierzina were buried, but the address that accompanied that information did not produce Luise. The grave had expired in 1995, and it must be assumed that Luise had either passed away, or was no longer able to look after it. A search at the Zentralmeldeamt Vienna on 2 Aug 1996 netted a "nothing on file" for Luise Weber. From the author's point of view, however, she was just what two of her aunts needed when they were near their deaths with no funds to provide even a grave for themselves. Luise arranged for both their funerals in the grave of Friedrich Weber, who is assumed to have been Luise's grandfather (i.e. Hedwig Zwierzina's father-in-law). Luise's parents and herself are resting in a family vault.  That Luise Weber and cousin Johanna Rainer knew eachother  is obvious from Johanna's stories and from photographs of the two women having an outing on the Feuerkogl.

18. Martha Maria Johanna Helena Zwierzina
25 Feb 1887 - 29 Dec 1973

the Baroness Pelikan

9th child of Johann Nepomuk Alois Maria Zwierzina and Helene Franziska Gottlieb

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Martha Maria Johanna Helena Zwierzina, ninth child of the third marriage was born 25 Feb 1887 in Wien-Gersthof, Wallrißgasse 19, christened on 6 March 1887 in the Roman Catholic parish of St. Leopold. Her birth was assisted by the midwife Karoline Urban of Gersthof, Weinberggasse 27. The maternal grandmother, Mrs. Marie Gottlieb of Königsberg, Prussia⁽²⁴⁾ wanted to be the Godmother, but could not attend in person, and was represented by Martha's 27 year-old half-sister Marie (Maria Anna) Zwierzina of Porzellangasse 13 in the 9th District of Vienna.

The next 29 years of Martha's life are a complete blank. Her father, barely having enough money to feed the still growing number of his children, was likely not able to feed grown daughters. She does show up on the Kataster listing of people entitled to resident status in Brno on which her date and place of birth is confirmed, and which shows her occupation as "Bonne" (domestic).^fggdoc251-4c She obviously had to work for a living. Cousin Ida gave me the impression that the Gottlieb girls were good looking, and the fact that the three of the five that had not been born with handicaps did in fact get married. Whatever the case may be, Martha certainly attracted the attention of the much older widowed Baron who must have thought her to be rather special.

Martha Zwierzina, at the age of 29, married Karl Pelikan Freiherr⁽²⁵⁾ von Plauenwald, a 69 year-old widower and retired senior accountant (Oberfinanzrat). Karl had been married to Jenni Lischkarz for 38 years and they had two sons and a daughter. He had been a widower for two years when he married Martha Zwierzina on 16 August 1916 in Vienna's world-famous St. Stephen's Cathedral (Stefansdom). On that day Martha Zwierzina became the Baroness Pelikan.^{fggdocs93,202} Witnesses to this marriage were Colonel Mihru Emil Mirkovic of the 8th District of Vienna (26 Langegasse apt 12 on the mezzanine), and my uncle First Lieutenant Hans Zwierzina, who gave his address as 53 Hütteldorferstraße in the 12th District of Vienna. Hans was, Martha's half-brother, and the bride's oldest living male relative, and it may very well have fallen to him to "walk her down the aisle" and to "give away the bride". Her only other living male relative, my father Emo, was two years younger than Hans and at that time first officer of the mountain-artillery battery 2/24 and in the midst of fighting on Monte San Gabriele in the 6th battle of the Isonzo at the Italian front. , and probably would not even have considered asking for time off for such an insignificant event as his half-sister's wedding. The sixth battle did not go well for Austria with the loss of the town of Gorizia to Italy. Hans was a flyer with an incredibly high number of enemy missions to his credit, and would have probably been allowed to fly to Vienna for this occasion.

            Martha's life with the old baron could not have been a bed of roses. He seems to have traveled a lot, and seems to have always traveled alone. His sons considered her a cheap gold-digger and wrote cruel and disrespective letters about her to each other. When surprised at the absence of great wealth in Karl's will, they preferred the story that his young, second, wife was a gold digger, which made a better story than to facing up to the father's inability to manage his income, and living above his means. He considered himself an artist, but even those paintings he sold to his friends were sold with the understanding that they would take posession of his paintings only after his death. So in effect he borrowed money from friends and instead of an "IOU" the debts were secured by his paintings.  The Pelikans had a family vault, but they would not think of burying Martha in it since Karl's first wife held that position of honour.

          The upshot of this was that Martha Baronin Pelikan (née Zwierzina) died a pauper and it was only the kindness of her niece Luise Weber that she found a grave to lie in. It was the grave of Fritz Weber, Ilse Weber's paternal grandfather Where Luise had already buried Valerie, her mother's sister. Valerie Zwierzina was forced in 1945 by the Czechs to go onto the Death March to Vienna, despite the fact that she had a club-foot. Valerie made it to Vienna,and was taken in and nursed by Luise Weber for two months, when the hardships of that march finally killed her. According to a letter received from MA-43 (cemetery administration of Vienna) Fritz Weber, Valerie Zwierzina and Martha Baronin Pelikan were sharing a grave (group 96, Row 3, grave number 305. The grave expired on 8th August 1994.

Pelikan Arms

Karl Pelikan Courtesy Roman Schneider

Karl was born on 13 February 1847 in the jurisdiction of the Vienna parish called am Hof (at the Court). Cousin Ida, who saw him in 1918 at Hans Zwierzina's funeral, described the Baron as a Klappermensch (a person who is so skinny as to appear to rattle like a skeleton). Ida also told me that the Baron caused some raised eyebrows at the funeral when he shoved people aside looking for someone he had still missing from his family tree. As I found out years later, his entire effort at collecting family data of the Zwierzina side, was a small black address book into which he had scribbled only two entries: "Zwierzina Maria 26.10.926 (73)" and "Zwierzina Hans 23.5.918 (28), Hauptm. Feldpilot". Both are dates of death, where Maria Zwierzina was the deceased's mother, and Hans was the flyer being buried. The dates are both correct death dates but Maria was only 71 years old, and not 73. Ida said that he had been a Lektor (a professor) at the Theresianum Military Academy in Vienna, and that he and Martha had an apartment there. No evidence was uncovered to substantiate either that Karl was connected with the Theresianum other than having been a student there, nor that either he or Martha resided on the premises. There is a document, however, dated 23 December 1860 which indicates that he was enrolled at the Theresianum as a cadet, although no evidence was found to indicate that he attended the Theresianum in any military capacity.

It is interesting to take a closer look at this family that Martha married into. The groom was the son of Anton Pelikan Freiherr von Plauenwald, who had been a Vice President of the Ministry of Finance of Lower Austria, had been made an honorary citizen of the town of Nikolsburg in Moravia, and to whom Emperor Franz Josef awarded the Imperial Order of the Iron Crown 2^nd Class at the occasion of bestowing on him the title of nobility in his own right - on top of the one he had inherited from his father. The groom's mother, Karoline Freiin Czapka von Winstetten, was the daughter of Ignaz Freiherr Czapka von Winstetten who had been Mayor of the city of Vienna until the disturbances of 1848 caused him to resign his post. He remained in self-imposed retirement until a cabinet document of 6 May 1856 appointed him to the position of Chief of Police of Vienna along with title Hofrath. At the end of 1859 he petitioned to be relieved of this position and in 1860 Emperor Franz Josef I acquiesced, and in recognition of his many years of loyal, public-minded and self-sacrificing service bestowed on him the Order of the Iron Crown 2nd Class and elevated him to the Austrian baronial level of Freiherr.

The Pelikan and Czapka families established a respectable record for marrying well - at least in terms of the society to which they perceived themselves as belonging. Taking the Pelikan von Plauenwald, and the Czapka von Winstetten families together as a group, the records I have been able to examine show that in the process of contracting 37 marriages, they accumulated 15 baronial in-laws, two major generals, three field marshal generals, five colonels, two lieutenant colonels, one major, two captains, two vice-admirals, one physician, one surgeon, one doctor of law, and a retired Banus (Governor) of Croatia.

My father's sister Martha Zwierzina certainly deserves a measure of admiration for grooming herself socially, and from what I heard, for fitting nicely into her role of Baroness. Martha must have been good for the old Baron as he lived 15 more years to die 3 April 1931 at the respectable age of 84. He was buried with his first wife Jenny (Winnifred) Lischkarz. Martha was not considered worthy of the Pelikan family vault, and was tucked in beside her sister Valerie Zwierzina and her brother-in-law Fritzt Weber by her generous niece Luise Weber.

So what did Martha get out this unusual union? All we know is that they had a comfortable place to live in, one which was large enough to have a "music room" as well as two smaller "side rooms" of which one was sublet to a tenant. Martha seems to have learned to play the piano, and Karl was known to be an artist who painted pictures. They were both interested in the fine arts and probably were good company for each other. Judging by the many postcards I was asked to help decipher, Karl traveled frequently, and we must assume that Martha accompanied him at least some of the time. If his pension was adequate for travel, they must have lived fairly comfortably.

There are unmistakable indications that she was not accepted by Karl's children with open arms, particularly not by his son Norbert whose letter to his brother Tony after the probate of Karl's estate is brutally clear. Norbert was bitterly disappointed when he found out that there was nothing to inherit and he seems to have blamed this on Martha. Norbert's animosity goes back to the time of his father's marriage to Martha Zwierzina and he writes to his brother "I was through with Papa in 1916 when he married". Then he adds his own rather vindictive bequest to his dead father "God can let him rest in peace, but as far as I am concerned he should turn around in his grave ten more times because he did not deal with me correctly". This son obviously never cared about his father, only about himself. He therefore never understood that his father needed companionship, which a much younger, intelligent woman could provide, nor could he understand that his father wanted to live like a "Baron" who wanted to travel and have fun beyond his financial abilities. The document he made up prior to his death shows that most of his paintings were already owned by people who had paid for them, but allowed the Baron to keep the paintings until his death. Not sure what Norbert was so upset about in his vindictive letters to his brother.

After Martha's husband passed the 80 year mark, they must have thought that a bit of paperwork needed to be done to prevent difficulties in case he died. They must have both known son Norbert's character - or lack of it. Could he have had an eye for his father's young wife? The couple, who was at the time living at Argentinierstraße 30 in the 4^th district of Vienna, went to see the Notary Dr. Josef Wurst, and on 27 February 1929 they had him draw up two documents.

In the first document Karl gifted to his wife the things from their home that he wanted the court to consider to be Martha's and not part of the estate to be distributed: the piano, the ottomans in the music room, the red velvet ensemble including the table, a picture (of a Manzanillo tree), the two wardrobes in the cabinett (a small side room), the wash stand therein, the wall clock, and the "wall of the foyer" (a room divider?). Martha signed that she was accepting the gifts in case of her husband's death. The document then continues to clarify other items which between them had been considered for a long time to be Martha's personal possessions: brass bed, desk, red carpet in the music room, dinner and tea service settings, silver jardiniere (ornamental container for displaying flowers), sewing machine, bedding and linens, kitchen utensils.^fggdoc254-5B

The second document was Karl's Testament. His wife Martha was to receive what is stipulated in the above-mentioned document. His daughter Olga, the widowed Mrs. Skocylas, gets from his room the green ensemble including the fauteuils, the table and curtains, the music sheet box from the music room with the music sheets marked with a "P", the carpet from his room, and the ceiling light fixture from the music room. Son Norbert, residing at Gmunden, gets the desk out of his room, also the chest of drawers, the wall clock from the music room, the wardrobe from the cabinett of the subtenant. Son Anton residing in Kalksburg, gets the china cabinet from the music room, the book case with top section from his room, the wardrobe including contents. The grandfather clock from his room, his bed and accouterments. The box to the right of the book case, his collection of post cards for his children. In a separate note he clarifies that "The dictionary and the silver pocket watch which I wear have been his (Anton's) for a long time. He should share the pictures of his mother with Norbert. In the same way, he is to share the pictures - that are not already spoken for - with Norbert." In this context "spoken for" means owned by others. Karl was an artist and had painted many pictures, some of which he had sold to friends who were content, however, to defer taking possession of the pictures even though they had paid Karl for them.]

He finished this document stating that he had no cash or valuables, that he was living off his pension, and that there was a separate document relative to his debts. Karl's final, and quite categorical statement was "I am, of course, to be placed in the vault at Hietzing with my parents and my late wife".^fggdoc254-5c

As a consequence of his death on 3 April 1931 the court of Wien-Margareten finalized the probate with a document dated 3 October 1931. This one deals with the "estate" of the late Karl Pelikan. The court was interacting with the widow Martha, and the adult son Anton. It went very well; "Martha's things" were evaluated at 150.00 Schillings and Anton agreed that the items enumerated were all hers. Total value on the credit side of the estate was pegged at 1198.93 Schillings, against debits of 1219.16 Schillings - the estate was in debt for 20.23 Schilling after paying the doctors and the undertaker. So much for baronial wealth and all the mean things said about Martha by Karl's sons! This author is definitely not impressed by the way the Pelikans treated Martha Zwierzina. Martha and Anton agreed that he would pay 2/3 and she would pay 1/3 of the court costs of the probate. As it happened, None of the Baron's family was interested in arranging a burial for the Baron Pelikan's widow, Martha Zwierzina. I have seen some of their vindictive letters to each other. The oldest son, especially could not get it into his head that his father was a nobody, who squandered whatever income he had to make himself look more important than he was. It was almost predictable that the disappointed heirs would blame the lack of funds on his younger wife, who was made out to be a gold digger. Interesting that he had to have people buy some of his pictures before his death but then keep the pictures until his death. Also interesting that none of the Baron's children found it appropriate to assist his widow in her old age. When she died, she totally depended on the daughter of one of her sisters to arrange for her funeral and burial. Shame on the Baron Pelikan and his descendants.

There was also a second slate of heirs listed, presumably in case any of the first slate of heirs were to predecease Karl and/or Martha, or die at the same time. Since these people are somewhat far removed, this document becomes an interesting indication of whom the couple felt closest to at that time. The names of these secondary heirs were: Wilhelmine Pelikan (already dead herself), Mrs. Max von Weissenturn (also dead), Miss Emilie Kmen, Baroness Mrs. Freddy Roklitansky, Mrs. Vita von Schenk, Mrs. Kettel recte Nettel Gottlieb, Mrs. Hedwig Weber, Mr. Friedrich Weber, Theodor Schur, Mrs. A. M. Petranovic.

Valerie and Martha were sisters, Friedrich probably the father-in-law of their sister Hedwig. Photo courtesy Roman D'Alessio

I can identify some of these people: Wilhelmine Pelikan was Karl's sister, Vita von Schenk was Viktoria von Grahe, the wife of Field Marshall Lieutenant Alfred Edler von Schenk. Karl's wife Martha and Alfred Schenk shared the same grandfather. Hedwig Weber was Martha's sister, and Friedrich Weber was Hedwig's husband. And since Martha's mother was a Gottlieb, Mrs. Kettel recte Nettel Gottlieb must be a relative of Martha's on her mother's side. Emilie Kmen does not fit but does have the same name as Emilie Zwierzina who was Godmother to Melanie Zwierzina, who was Martha's sister - so there could have been some closeness there, apart from that, Emilie Zwierzina was a single mother and would not have moved in the circles of the Schenks or the Pelikans. Fact is that I have never heard the name Kmen before. I do not know how the others are connected.

This slate of standby heirs raises other questions: Alfred Schenk lived until 1952, 21 years into the future, so why did Martha designate Vita Schenk, who was not related by blood, instead of Vita's husband Alfred who was a first cousin. As a matter of fact, why did Martha not designate her needy sisters Melanie or Valerie who lived at least part of the time in an institution for the physically challenged? Next in line after the sisters should have been half-sisters or half-brothers; in 1931 there were several of those around.

So what was in it for Martha? She got nothing that she did not already own. There is no mention of income, or whether any part of Karl's pension would have been paid to his widow. We can only hope that she received something because she had to go on living, and in fact did so for another 42 years. She lived through yet another world war, and was 86 years old and childless when she died at 4 a.m. on 29 Dec 1973, in Wien 10, Kundrathstraße 3 of age-related causes^fggdoc96 (The Kundrathstraße address is actually the Franz Joseph Hospital. Her residence address at the time of her death was Wien 4, Graf Starhemberggasse 28).^fggdoc44 As we have seen earlier, Martha was buried by her niece, Luise Weber, at Vienna's Zentralfriedhof in Fritz Weber's grave, which he already shared with Martha's sister Valerie Zwierzina. Martha, Valerie, and Hedwig were sisters. The resting places of Hedwig or Luise turned out to be a family vault where Hedwig's Husband and Luise's father was already resting. The Friedrich Weber on the stone is believed to be the grandfather of Luise, the father of Hedwig's husband - also named Friedrich Weber.  

 

19. A daughter
July 12 1888 - July 12 1888
10^th child of Johann Nepomuk Alois Maria Zwierzina and Helene Franziska Gottlieb

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This unnamed daughter was stillborn at 6:30 a.m. Jul 12, 1888 at Wien-Gersthof, Neuwaldeggerstraße 37. ^fggdoc41

Helene Franziska Gottlieb also died 3 hours later.^fggdoc42

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Fourth marriage of Johann Nepomuk Alois Maria Zwierzina

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Maria Laura Eva ("Ritschi") Kutschera

25 Feb. 1855 - 26 Oct. 1926
My Paternal Grandmother
Fourth Wife of Johann Nepomuk Alois Maria Zwierzina
Second child of Anton Heinrich Kutschera and Maria Elvira née Svírak

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My paternal grandmother Maria Kutschera, was born in Brünn [now Brno, Czech Republic] as the second of six children of the jeweler Heinrich Kutschera and his wife Maria Elvira née Svírak.

Heinrich Kutschera, my paternal grandmother's father was a goldsmith by trade, and obviously an entrepreneur who tried to break into the close-knit and well-guarded local market of Brno where the local guild of goldsmiths was not at all inclined to welcome newcomers with open arms. The red tape was already well established and really something to contend with. Someone who wished to move to a town and start up a business had to petition the town fathers to allow it. The town council would examine the case from every angle. And require evidence that the applicant was in fact a competent craftsman, then would ask input from the local guild of that particular trade with the predictable result that the guild would almost always oppose a newcomer who would be a new competitor and "take food out of the mouths" of the established practitioners of that trade or craft. The counsel also wanted to know the resources at the command of the applicant, his present or intended marital status, his reason for wanting to settle in this particular community and what if any local ties he already had. It took a competent and tenacious person to overcome the obstacles, to convince all interested parties of his good character, of his competence and of his good prospects and to finally obtain approval and settle down to make a living in harmony with the people who opposed his entry. For the whole story of what Heinrich Kutschera had to overcome, see the Kutschera page.

Heinrich Kutschera's daughter Maria Laura Eva married Johann Nepomuk (Muki) Zwierzina on 2 Feb 1889 in Wien-Gersthof, Neuwaldeggerstraße 37. Witnesses at the ceremony were (1) Ernst Chalaupka, Captain, Wien-Gersthof, Neuwaldeggerstraße 9; and (2) Moriz Schenk, First Lieutenant, Wien IV, Schaumburgergasse 11, husband of grandfather's sister Eulalia Zwierzina.fggdoc18⁽²⁶⁾

She was 33 years old, and he was 63, and his last wife had been dead just six months. He seems to have been rushing things a bit, but there were four little girls under ten years old needing a mother. Besides, as their first child's date of birth indicates, grandmother was already two months pregnant. During the 14 years she was married to my grandfather, Maria Laura Eva Kutschera gave birth to the following four children, of which two became the only surviving male descendants from among the 23 children sired by grandfather:

  20. Johann Maria ("Hans") Zwierzina
7 September 1889 - 23 May 1918
My father's only brother Hans
1st child of Johann Nepomuk Alois Maria Zwierzina and Maria Laura Eva Kutschera

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Johann Maria "Hans" Zwierzina, first child of the fourth marriage of Johann Muki Zwierzina and Maria (née Kutschera) was born 7 September 1889, and christened on 19 September 1889. Hans became a heavily decorated captain in the Austrian Flying Corps. Owing to the amount of information discovered about him, all of chapter six is devoted to him.

     

21.   Emil Anton Karl Maria ("Emo") Zwierzina

24 April 1891 - 28 February 1956

My Father Emo

2nd child of Johann Nepomuk Alois Maria Zwierzina and Maria Laura Eva Kutschera

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Emil Anton Karl Maria "Emo" Zwierzina (my father), second child of the fourth marriage was born 24 April 1891 at Wien-Gersthof, Kleingasse 6, and christened on 11 May 1891 . He became a captain first in the Austrian, then later in the German army. Inasmuch as he was one of the major players in my life, all of chapter seven is devoted to him.  Note that the year after Emo's birth - in 1892 his father Johann was reported to have been residing near Zlabings.

   22.  Margarete Maria Johanna ("Gretl") Zwierzina

14 March 1894 - 8 Sep 1963

Mrs. Robert Hablé

3rd child of Johann Nepomuk Alois Maria Zwierzina and Maria Laura Eva Kutschera

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Margarete "Gretl" Zwierzina, third child of the fourth marriage was born 14 March 1894.^fggdoc55 According to the Vienna Meldearchiv,^fggdoc165 Gretl was born in Zlabings, Mähren (now Slavonice in the Czech Republic), and married Diplom-Ingenieur Robert Hable (born 4 Jun 1890 in Vienna) and resided - at least till 1947 - in the 4^th district of Vienna, at Maitzengasse 14/1/6. I met Gretl in 1938 in Vienna, she seemed to have no children. According to the original Meldeauskunft from the Vienna Zentralmeldeamt (reference number 1096/63), she died on 8 September 1963; her last known address was 4 Phorusgasse 14/61 or 14/6.^fggdoc239 ( As a note of interest:  Gretl's  given name is spelled "Margaretha" in the listings of the Vienna website for grave information, and date of burial is shown as 18 Sep 1963. The grave's location was: Zentralfriedhof Gruppe 130 Reihe 8 Nr. 11)

The information that Gretl was born in Zlabings raised a number of questions, none of which has yet been answered. The two children before her, Hans and Emo, were born in Gersthof, a suburb of Vienna. Why was Gretl born in Zlabings, Moravia? Had the family moved there? No, we know that the next child (Karl) was again born in Gersthof. This means that grandmother Kutschera went to Zlabings specifically to have this baby. Did the whole family go, or did she go off by herself? I have no authoritative answers, but I have a theory: Two months after grandfather died in 1903, Ritschie's mother, Maria Elvira Kutschera born Svirak died on 1 September 1903 also in Grossiegharts^fggdoc165, and I must assume that she had been living with her daughter and son-in-law. Grossiegharts is not very far from Waidhofen/Thaya, and very near the Czech border. Zlabings is also near Waidhofen/Thaya and the Czech border. There were Kutschera in Grossiegharts, but although I have been in touch with them, I have not been able to detect anything to indicate a relationship. It is my guess that my great-grandmother Svirak lived in Zlabings in 1894, and that Ritschie went there to have Gretl. She would have been considerably more comfortable with her mother than at home, where she had the two young boys, Hans five, and Emo three years old to cope with, not to mention old Muki. It may have been during this visit that the plan was hatched to have great-grandmother Svirak move in with them once they found a place in the same general area out in the country where rents would be lower than in the Vienna suburb of Gersthof.

23 .   Karl Zwierzina

29 July 1896 - 27 Oct 1897

4th child of Johann Nepomuk Alois Maria Zwierzina and Maria Laura Eva Kutschera

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Karl Zwierzina, fourth child of the fourth marriage of Johann Muki Zwierzina and Maria (née Kutschera) was born 29 July 1896. I used to believe that he only lived long enough to be given a name because there is a small cross written in beside the entry of his birth in the military records. Cousin Ida Birman seems to remember however, that there were extreme difficulties at his birth, and that he died during the delivery. This is inconflict with the documented date of death shown above which is taken from the pages of the "Kataster der in Brünn Heimat zuständigen" ^fggdoc251-4C and indicates the child did not die at birth but did suffer damage and died at the age of 15 months.

This fourth wife got to be known as Ritschie (Dorli spells it 'Ricci') in the family. After grandfather died in Grossiegharts, she moved to Kochgasse 19 in the 8th District of Vienna. This is the same address that Emo moved to on 4 Jul 1919, and the same one he gave in July 1919 on his application to change his religion.^fggdoc38 In fact grandmother Ritschie remained at Kochgasse 19 until her death on 26 Oct 1926.^fggdoc165 Somewhere along the line she acquired a French boarder, a Mr. DuBois, who became her beau and who also got along quite well with her son Hans the flyer, giving rise to all sorts of speculations about how DuBois, supposedly a French journalist before the war, who should be considered an enemy alien during the first World War, may have become a mortal embarrassment to an officer like Hans. DuBois' signature appears on my father Emo's registration slip dated 20 Mar 1919 as "Fritz Dr.Bois".

According to Hans Zwierzina's baptismal document, one of the sponsors was a Laura Kutschera living in Gmunden. I am assuming that this was my grandmother's 14 years younger sister Laura. When I went to the Meldeamt in Gmunden in May 1994 I found that although there were some Kutscheras living there around that time, there was no woman who could have been the Laura in question.

According to Ida Birman, my grandmother Maria Kutschera was buried in Vienna's Zentral Friedhof (3rd Gate). Her probate (District Court of Josefstadt, number 4A 1003/26), shows her born 25 Feb 1855 in Brno, deceased 26 Oct 1926 in the 8th district, Kochgasse 19, and makes reference to children Emil and Margarete, her late husband Johann Zwierzina who died 3 Jul 1903 in Groß-Siegharts, Lower Austria, and also mentions her parents Anton Heinrich Kutschera, deceased in Brno, and Maria Elvira, née Svirak, died on 1 Sep 1903 in Groß-Siegharts, and her siblings Heinrich Kutschera and Leonie Schemmel, manufacturer's widow, born circa 1871, resident of Lodz, Poland. Heinrich Kutschera, born 4 Oct 1857 in Brno, was last reported in the 9th district at Rossauergasse 3, died 25 Feb 1929.^fggdoc165

How many children did grandfather have?

My final count of children born to Johann Nepomuk Alois Maria Zwierzina's four wives is 23, one less than the number I kept hearing as I grew up. According to the usually reliable Cousin Ida, there should be about five more, since she had heard that Emma Thomala had nine children. My count of 23 is based on the documents I have been able to find, and even more so on the fact that there simply was not enough time between the first wife and the third wife to have more children except for the totally improbable case of having four sets of twins in a row - which certainly would have gone down into family lore. At any rate, only two names are unknown. Of the 23 children nine died before reaching maturity. The remaining 14 included only two sons (Hans and Emo). Of the 12 girls five married, and of the seven who did not marry, two became single parents. Two of the five married girls did not have children (Gretl and Martha), Ida and Hedwig each only had one daughter neither of whom married; the fifth girl Helene who went to Rio de Janeiro is reported to have had three miscarriages, and no surviving children. The two single parents each had one daughter; Emilie's Nettl was deformed and died around 40 years of age without offspring, while Minne's Ida married and had a daughter Dorli. Dorli never married and died childless.

That left it up to the two sons, Hans and Emo, to prevent the family from dying out. They just skimped by. Both married and each had only one male child: Hans' son Hans Nagati now residing at Abbotsford, British Columbia, Canada, and Emo's son Felix Game, the author of this book, also residing in Canada. Both were born with the Zwierzina name but both found it more convenient to change their names for different reasons as will be seen in their own chapters. The two grandsons of Muki Zwierzina did better than their fathers and have ensured that the Zwierzina blood line would continue. Hans Nagati has two sons, and Felix Game has three sons. Compared to their grandfather, Hans and Felix show an incredible 100% of male offspring. One could almost believe that by changing their names to Nagati and Game they have broken the legendary Curse on the Zwierzinas.

It is interesting to compare grandfather's 23 children to what one author wrote about the size of officers' families: "Officers had relatively few children, probably because of the lateness of their marriages (average age at matrimony was 36 years in an 1870 sample). In 1872 of 3628 married officers 969 (36.5%) had no children. The total number of officers' children in that year was 6058, less than 2 per family". I guess grandfather Muki was unusual.

The Curse On The Zwierzinas

The more my cousin Dorli became involved with the sketching of family relationships for me, the more she became aware of the unusual shortage of male offspring. She wrote in one of her letters: "It is truly incredible that so little assurance for the continuance of the family would come out of so much procreation. "This in turn reminded her of a family legend which asserts that a curse had been laid on the Zwierzinas a few generations ago. Dorli puts it this way in her letter:

Es gibt ja eine Familienlegende, derzufolge eine Frau den Leutnant Zwierzina verflucht hat, weil er ihren Sohn wegen Desertierens hinrichten liess... Jedenfalls scheint der Fluch gewirkt zu haben. Vielleicht gut, daß Du Dich nicht mehr Zwierzina nennst.

There exists a family legend, according to which a woman laid a curse on lieutenant Zwierzina for having had her son put to death for desertion... At any rate, the curse seems to have worked. Maybe it is a good thing that you don't call yourself Zwierzina any more.

Since grandfather would have easily qualified to have his sons become cadets and be educated free of charge by the military, it was doubly unfortunate that only two sons survived to adulthood. Did grandfather Muki believe in the curse on the Zwierzinas? Was he trying to prove it wrong? Whatever the reason for this one man population explosion, it could not have been easy to make ends meet on a captain's pension and all those mouths to feed. He certainly earned his reputation for "never having any money" quite honestly. I even suspect that the many changes of residence were related to the cost of keeping a roof over his family's head.

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Notes for Chapter 4: Muki  Zwierzina, Cptn.

1. The original was painted by Ludwig (Louis) Braun [PK 2598/190]. It is called die Feuertaufe and is signed "Louis Braun, München 1899". It had been exhibited at Schloß Grafenegg from 19 May to 28 October 1984 during the Provincial Exhibition of Lower Austria (catalog title: Das Zeitalter Franz Josephs. Niederösterr. Landesaustellung, Schloß Grafenegg 1984).

2. There is for example a rather different scenario reported by William A. Jenks in his Francis Joseph and the Italians 1849-1859. He portrays (p.16) the Crown Prince as a young Hussar officer: "When the Piedmontese attacked at Santa Lucia on May 6, he served calmly under fire as ordnance officer to Field Marshall Lieutenant Konstantin Baron D'Aspre. After a cannonball came within a few feet of the dynasty's best hope, D'Aspre ordered him to a rear position in preparation for a counterattack." This version reads nicely but has some holes in it, and Jenks does contradicts himself because on the previous page he had reported that Francis Joseph had just been appointed governor of Bohemia on April 6, so was obviously not assigned to D'Aspre as ordnance officer, a position which would at any rate be held by an artillery officer, and not by a Hussar. It also seems improbable that the Field Marshall would have been there on the spot to order FJ to the back.

In a book by Eugene Bagger, Francis Joseph, the following reference to Santa Lucia can be found on page 130: "A few months before his accession he had been through his baptism of fire at Santa Lucia, on the Italian front. He was sent against his wishes, and to the embarrassment of Field Marshall Radetzky who hated being saddled with the responsibility for life and limb of another Imperial Prince, and he remained under fire against repeated orders of his superiors." In this same book there is the reproduction of a painting (between pp. 136 and 137) which shows Franz Joseph on horseback with staff officers approaching him among much shooting. The caption reads as follows: "The Battle of Santa Lucia. Fought on May 6th 1848. Lieutenant General d'Aspre (in center) begs the Archduke Francis Joseph (in left foreground) to withdraw from the heavy fire to safety."

3. Regiments were known by numbers but also by the name of the owner. Owners changed but the Regiment number did not. #45 was owned by Erzherzog Sigismund 1847-1891 and then by Prinz Friedrich August Herzog zu Sachsen 1892-1902 but had been previously owned by Baron Mayer.d^oc127

4. Lünette: the military use of the word refers to a somewhat moon-shaped, minor fortification.

5. Angelo Massagrande was born 1807 in Verona, Venetia and was a baker by trade. In 1848 he was nearing the end of his second stint in the Austrian army. He first joined the 45^th Infantry Regiment (at that time called Baron Mayer) on 28 August 1828. He was given the usual 3 Florins Handgeld and signed up for eight years, was twice promoted and struck off strength at the end of his eight years in 1836. In 1841 he took the 3 Florins again and signed up for another eight years - as a replacement for a conscripted man by the name of Salgaro. He had to sign up as a commoner, but was again quickly promoted to corporal on 1 November 1841. He was finally discharged as a Kapitulant on 15 May 1850. (Kapitulant is one who had signed up for extended military duty). Source: LDS film #1327606 (Grundbuch Infantry Regiment 45; Heft 23-60).

6. From Joseph von Falkenstein's Imperial Austrian Medals: Founded on 19 August 1849 [this date must be an error since the medal already features in the citation dated 2 Sep 1848] by the Minister of War on the suggestion of the royal cabinet that some award for acts of courage and bravery should be made to enlisted men.

7. In the 1853 edition of the Militärschematismus des Österreichischen Kaisertums (kk Staatsdruckerei, Wien 1853) he is listed as Unterleutnant, IR14 (Infantry Regiment 14), and his Silver Medal of Valor 2nd Class is mentioned.

8. Jäger means literally 'hunter'. These units were relatively modern compared to the Line Infantry which attacked in solid formation and made an easy target for the enemy. During the Napoleonic Wars the superior effectiveness of the French tirailleurs was noticed and the Jäger units were formed in answer to this threat. These soldiers had more freedom of movement and each and every one was considered a single, dependable fighting unit.

9. If the picture of the three little girls was actually taken in 1862, then the last girl (Ida) would have been only 1 year old and is not in the picture. The three girls must therefore be Anna ("Netta") born 1857, Emilia born 1859, and Maria born 1860. It appears that the oldest is the one standing.

10. Belohnungsantrag für die im Laufe des Feldzuges 1866 vorgekommenen hervorragenden Leistungen vor dem Feinde. (Request for reward for exceptional achievements before the enemy during the campaign of 1866).^fggdoc189 (Cerekvic is 10 Km north of Königgrätz, and is today called Cerekvice n. Bystrici Czech Republic).

11. Königgrätz is now called Hradec Králové, and is situated about 60 miles east of Prague. The battle was fought on 3 Jul 1866 between 215,000 Austrian and 221,000 Prussian troops. The Prussians under Count von Moltke decisively defeated the Austrians under General Benedek, and occupied Brno nine days later. Königgrätz is the name chosen for this battle by the Prussian King. Some historians like to refer to that battle by the names of other villages involved in the big battle. H.G. Wells in the Outline of History calls it the Battle of Sadowa.

The Prussians' victory was attributed mainly to the breach-loading rifles they had adopted (apart from reloading faster, they allow the soldier to remain lying down while loading, and thus not present a convenient target). Prussian artillery had also been improved, and had been moving to rifled cannon barrels since 1859, which resulted in a rifled 12 pounder with a range of 1500 meters, and 1200 meters for shrapnel. Prussian statistics indicate that they had 10,877 casualties in 1866. Of these 4,450 were killed in action, while 6,427 died of cholera and other diseases. Besides these dead there were 16,177 wounded. (Source: Vol.II Ehrenmal des unsterblichen deutschen Soldaten). Another source states that the number of Austrian casualties was 1313 officers and 41499 men, while the Prussians lost 3590 officers and 8794 men. (Beyond Nationalism). I believe that the second source includes those that were taken prisoner.

12. Earlier we have seen that the annual cost of attending military school was about 800 Fl. Thirty years later a captain was expected to retire on less than that!!

13. From Joseph von Falkenstein's Imperial Austrian Medals: On the 2nd of December 1873 (the date of 25th year of reign) Emperor Franz Joseph I founded, for award to all persons, without reference to their rank or social position, the 1873 War Medal, if they had participated in one or more campaigns during his reign (from the year 1848).

14. Cornaró. While working with a microfilm of the Marriage Register of the Protestant parish of the Prague garrison (kk evangelische Seelsorge Helvetischer Confession), I came across an entry of this man's daughter being married for the second time: On 8 October 1873 Georg Best, k.k. Captain in the 58^th Line Infantry Regiment, son of Gustav Best, Captain in Hannover, and Dorothea, born Bornemann, married Mrs. Henrietta, widowed Zimmermann, born Edle von Cornaró, daughter of Franz Edler von Cornaró, k.k. Lieutenant Colonel, retired, and his wife Maria Jagschitz.
Note: The title 'Edler von' had not been mentioned when Cornaró acted as witness at my grandfather Johann Nepomuk Zwierzina's marriage to Anna Edle von Steinberg because he only obtained the title two years later (20 May 1858).^{Extracted by the author} There is at least one living descendant of this Franz Cornaró in Vienna, (Dr. Andreas Cornaró) whom I have met in person.^fggdoc142

15. There is a discrepancy between his basic military documents which show his Year of birth as 1793 and the nobility records which show it as 1791. Similarly his nobility records show the beginning of his military career as 1809 with the Wiener Freiwillige Landwehr Battalion, whereas his military record starts him in 1812 with the 59^th Infantry Regiment (where he was transferred after the Wiener Freiwillige Landwehr was disbanded).

16. Extracted from the Birth Register of the Military Invalids Home in Pettau, Styria, Austria, as seen on LDS film #1454477 Item 12 (Geburtsbuch der Seelsorge des k.k. Militärinvalidenhauses Pettau), page 58: Born at Pettau, house #44, at quarter before six on 9 November 1841, Johann Nepomuk Franz Xavier Josephus son of Johann Nepomuk Steinberg, Captain in the 1st Landwehr Bataillon of the k.k. Infantry Regiment Count A. Kinski Nr. 47, and Eleonora née Becher, daughter of the former merchant and estate owner Franz Becher of Pilsen in Bohemia, and his wife Barbara Zunterer. Godfather (sponsor): Franz Xavier Becher, Estate owner of the two estates Chanovice and Slatina (about 60 kilometers southeast of Prague, Bohemia) represented by Captain Edler von Zinzenfeld of the k.k. Infantry Regiment Kinski Nr.47. ^{Extracted by the author Dec.1991}

17. When Ida first told me about this, she seemed to remember that this "Uncle Muki" had retired twice. He had been recalled, and it was during this last stretch of service that he was made Commandant of Schönbrunn. About two years later she provided the additional information that Uncle Muki had been the Stadkommandant of Linz, and when I asked if she could remember the timing of these assignments, she got somewhat muddled. She said that he was in Schönbrunn circa 1866-1868, and in Linz about 1911 when she had visited him there. I think there are some big errors here because Uncle Muki was born in 1841, and would have been only 25 years old in 1866 at which time his military records put him into the Battle of Königgrätz where he was wounded, and where he fell into Prussian captivity. If Ida visited him in Linz around 1911, then both his commands, Linz and Schönbrunn would have been after his recall. It is more likely that he would have been hauled out of retirement to run Schönbrunn when World War-1 had started and younger officers were needed elsewhere.

18. Extract from the Evidenz-Protokoll of the Linz Platzkommando dated 26 June 1920. Note that this provides something of a confirmation that he had been associated with the command of the city of Linz as Ida had reported.

19. Ida and Dorli are the cousins who have been such great help with much of the Zwierzina-related information contained in this work.

20. Yetta O'Brien (née Cohen) was born in New York on April 15th, 1897 of Jewish parents. She became a high-school teacher and met Donogh O'Brien in Munich while traveling during her sabbatical. That must have been around 1930. She never told her mother and father that her husband was not a Jew (They must surely have guessed from the name). Yetta died of a weak heart on Oct. 22nd 1981. For the last 20 years of her life she was deaf, which increased her loneliness.

21. Donogh O'Brien, born in 1901, died of cancer (and alcoholism) at the beginning of the fifties. He had married his Egyptian princess, but she couldn't stand the English winters and left him soon after the wedding.

22. István Deák in his book about Habsburg Officers Beyond Nationalism points out that concubinage was illegal in the corps, but that the practice was widely tolerated; he then quotes from the memoirs of General Edmund Glaises von Horstenau (ed. Broucek) that in the 1870s in Salzburg half the officers in his father's 59^th Infantry Regiment lived in Konkubinat.

23. A pathologist acquaintance had this to say about Helen's sickness: A powerful fever from any cause can get hair to fall out... but come back.. worries (young) women mainly... Could be mononucleosis (with liver involvement and jaundice) or hepatitis (with jaundice)... or listeria (a rat born disease)... or maybe 50 other things... If it were Yellow Fever.. it would have been "black water fever" with dark brown urine.. Could have easily been malaria...

24. There are quite a few localities called Königsberg, but except for the one in East Prussia, none really are in Prussia. The author believes that before the creation of Czechoslovakia in 1918, Königsberg about 15 kilometers northeast of Eger may have belonged to Prussia, and that this is the place referred to.

25. Freiherr means Baron, a Middle Ages title of nobility that ranks after Count.

26. There were Two Moritz Schenks - father and son. The younger was the father of that Robert Schenk who lost his life in the sinking. At grandfather's marriage in 1889 the son Moriz would have been 38 years old, while his father would have been at least 59. It would have been more normal to ask a brother-in-law to be witness to one's marriage, than to ask one's much younger nephew. On the other hand it would be more probable for a first lieutenant to be 38 years old than to be 59 and some. Since both father and son are only known by their civilian occupations, either of them could only have held a commission in the Reserve (which was not at all unusual), and there the age, relative to the rank held, is not as significant. Although I am strictly guessing, I would think that Moriz the father, the groom's brother-in-law and of the same generation, was the witness.

27. According to the Kriegsarchive in Vienna, any actions taken in case of misdeeds would have normally come under the jurisdiction of the military command of the territory in question - in this case that would have been the Lombardian-Venetian general command. The Kriegsarchive suggested to inquire at the Archivio di Stato di Milano, Via Senato 10, I-20121 Milano.

The response from the Archivo di Stato di Milano was that their files had been destroyed in a bombing during WW2.

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